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 school board meetings, many of those wearing orange “Get Into Good Trouble” T-shirts this time around. A smaller group, stationed at the front parking lot of Mathews High School and waving Confederate banners, stood for keeping the Lee-Jackson name.

About an hour and a half at the start Tuesday’s meeting, which was held in the Harry M. Ward Auditorium at Mathews High School, was devoted to citizen comment over the name change. A total of 26 residents spoke, with 16 of those favoring the change. One other potential speaker, Joey Taylor of Gloucester, representing the Lane-Armistead Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, was not allowed to speak, since it was announced in advance that comment would be limited to county residents and school employees only.

Those speaking in favor of the name change included Molly Hoffman, Raymond Willis, Linda Bradford, Chris Bridge, Ted Broderson, Brent Payne, Lori Dusenberry, Joy Drummond, Bethanie Rose, Brianna Carter, Ned Lawless, Meg Roberts, Michael Carter, Kamilah Turner, Roger Mann and Debra Moore-Zierow.

Those opposing the name change and/or making other comments about the proposal were Charles Gerald “Jerry” Sadler, Diana Swenson, Jim Hudgins, Danette Machen, Doug Sweet, Frank Butler, Jon Noble, Bill Crowe and Sharon Frye.

The public discussion was raucous at times, with school board chairman John Priest having to warn both sides in the debate at various times to curb their outbursts and show respect for the other speakers.

Black Panthers present

While the comment period was underway, a group of about a dozen people dressed all in black and sporting T-shirts from “The Original Black Panthers of Virginia” entered the auditorium and stood along the back wall. At one point, Priest asked the group to separate in order to comply with social distancing requirements; they spread out and remained there—and silent—until shortly before the vote was taken, when they left. A contingent of Mathews County Sheriff’s Office deputies and Virginia State Police was also present at the meeting.

During her comments, Turner said that the group seeking the name change had collected over $14,000 in pledges to offset the purchase of a new school sign and any other costs associated with changing the name.

Following public comment, school board member Bambi Thompson made the motion, seconded by Linda Hodges, to remove the name Lee-Jackson from the county’s elementary school. Priest asked if the motion would include any suggestion for an alternate name. “Let’s do it one step at a time,” Hodges replied.

School board member Jeanice Sadler, who cast the only abstention, said she favored naming all three county schools Mathews, including the current Thomas Hunter Middle School.

Thomas Hunter, a Rosenwald school, was the name of the county’s Black school in the days before integration. The building had been renamed Mathews Intermediate School once integration took place and had reverted to the name Thomas Hunter Middle School in 1990.

“I am trying to be fair,” Sadler said in, as she put it, “going down the middle of the road” in removing both the name of Thomas Hunter, a former enslaved person in Mathews County, as well as Lee and Jackson. She introduced a substitute motion to that effect, but that motion failed for lack of a second.

Thompson attempted to put an end to comments in the community that the matter should have been placed on the November ballot. She said that school board policy specifically states that the school board has the responsibility of determining school names. “I think we can put it to rest,” she said. “It can’t be a referendum.”

Hodges, in her comments, said that she is concerned about the “impact on non-white students” by the name Lee-Jackson, a name that had been given over a century ago when separate but equal was the order of the day. “We’ve become desensitized to the name and what it represents,” she said.

She read from one of the many letters she and other school board members have received about the issue in the past month. This person had said he had never given it a second thought, that the proposal seemed at first to be a waste of taxpayer money. Then he read Turner’s argument about the name and said it opened his eyes. While he was not affected personally by the name, he could see how others might be and even if a single child is upset, then it should be changed.

Hodges commended Turner “for living out her values” and for enduring the “vile statements made about her publicly.” Hodges said she wanted a school name that let all children get the same message: “You are important. You are valued. And you are equal to your peers.”

School board member Desmond Smith began his comments by clarifying that it is not necessary to change the name Thomas Hunter Middle School. Calling it “relevance over race,” he said that the name Thomas Hunter has local relevance, while Lee and Jackson have no direct connection to Mathews.

He spoke about his work with Building Black Achievers, a program at MHS that exposed high school students to the opportunities beyond Mathews. The program, he said, had been renamed Building Better Achievers and expanded to the school’s white population as interest grew. He spoke of one group trip to the Norfolk State University campus, where students were able to see the school’s Lyman Beecher Brooks Library, named for an educator who came from Mathews County and who was the first president of Norfolk State.

“That brought them so much pride,” Smith said, seeing a man who came from Mathews to be honored by the university. “To me, that’s relevant.” Thomas Hunter Middle School’s Brooks Auditorium (formerly multipurpose room) had been named in honor of Brooks’s brother and fellow educator J. Murray Brooks, once a principal of Thomas Hunter, with the dedication taking place in one of the school’s Founders Day programs.

He urged his fellow board members to “keep relevant things … to empower the students,” going on to talk about the teachers, both Black and white, who were relevant in his formative years. Keep Thomas Hunter Middle School; keep Brooks Auditorium, but remove Lee-Jackson, Smith said.

“If it offends one student it should offend every student,” he said of the Lee-Jackson name. “It is not relevant to them.”

“I’ve been frankly speechless” this past month, Priest said. “I’m appalled to a certain extent” at the negative reaction in the community.

“No matter what we do tonight, the five of us are not going to fix an underlying problem in this community,” he said. Speaking to the Rev. Melissa Mason (who was in attendance) and other county spiritual leaders, “it’s in your hands now to heal this community.”

Following the vote to remove the name, a woman in the audience shouted out “That’s the first step of healing.”

After the vote to remove the name, the school board unanimously approved setting the process in motion to select a new name to serve as a “positive inspiration” for students. The community will be asked for name suggestions and a committee of about 6-7 people (including school employees, parents and Smith to represent the school board) to come up with recommendations for the school board to consider.

Superintendent of Schools Nancy Welch indicated after the meeting that she will begin the process of removing the Lee-Jackson name from the school and put up temporary signage to indicate the location of the county’s as-yet-unnamed elementary school.