The name Lee-Jackson Elementary is now history.
By a 4-0-1 vote Tuesday night, the Mathews County School Board voted to remove the name from the school, putting off a decision on selecting a new name for the school until the end of the year.
Mathews County has had a Lee-Jackson School since 1916 when the high school in the Mathews Court House area (one of several high schools throughout the county at that time serving white children) was given that name in honor of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. The school eventually became an elementary school, and the name retained even as all the other elementary schools in Mathews were closed and consolidated into the present institution.
Attempts to change the name in 1974 and 1995 proved unsuccessful. This most recent attempt had been led by Kamilah Turner of Cobbs Creek, a 2001 Mathews High School graduate, who mobilized community support, with a large contingent attending the July 21 and Tuesday night’s schoo...