Prince William County votes to rename Stonewall Jackson schools in Manassas

Stonewall Jackson will be removed from the names of two schools in northern Virginia following a vote by the school board.

The Prince William County School Board unanimously voted Monday night to rename Stonewall Jackson Middle School and Stonewall Jackson High School, two public schools located in Manassas, Va., near D.C.

Board members voted to changes the names of buildings to Unity Braxton Middle School and Unity Reed High School, respectively, in honor of Blacks with ties to the town.

The schools had been named for Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, a Virginia native who earned his nickname during the First Battle of Bull Run in Manassas in 1861.

Board members formed committees earlier this month to consider renaming the schools amid a rekindled push to rid the country of statues and monuments to the former Confederacy.

Instead of a Confederate general, the schools will be named for local couple Celestine S. and Carroll Braxton and Arthur Reed, a longtime security assistant at Stonewall High.

Ms. Braxton, a former Stonewall Middle teacher, retired in 1983 after 33 years with Prince William County Public Schools, according to the school board. Her husband, a former gunnery sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, served in both World War II and the Korean War and is a Congressional Gold Medal recipient, the school board said.

Reed, the former security assistant, was “the clear favorite” among members of the Stonewall community who proposed a new namesake for the school, according to the board.

“He saw Stonewall students for who they were,” said board and naming committee member Adele Jackson. “He embodied the name unity. He loved his school and his students.”

Jennifer Wall, another board and committee member, said the use of the word “unity” in the schools’ names is supposed to represent its students being “at one with others.”

“Unity is exactly what our community needs,” added Dr. Babur Lateef, the school board’s chair.

Jackson, an instructor at the Virginia Military Institute prior to the Civil War led the Confederates to a win against Union forces in Manassas during one of the war’s first major battles in July 1861. He died less than two years later after being wounded in battle in nearby Spotsylvania County and is buried near his former home in Lexington, Va.

A statue of Jackson on display in Richmond, Va., the former capital of the Confederacy, is among several Confederate monuments in the city vandalized during recent nationwide unrest sparked by the racially charged death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by police last month in Minneapolis.

Confederate statues in some other cities have been removed or toppled following Floyd’s killing on May 25, as have other monuments and tributes honoring controversial historical figures.

Most recently, Princeton University announced Saturday it was changing the names of two buildings honoring former President Woodrow Wilson due to his “racist thinking and policies.”