All-white WV school board refuses to consider renaming majority black Stonewall Jackson MiddleSchool

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Kanawha County school board members aren’t expressing much support for renaming a Charleston school that’s dubbed after a Confederate general, is located on a former plantation — and has one of the county’s highest populations of black students.

School board member Becky Jordon noted that she’s a 1979 graduate of Stonewall Jackson High School, which is now Stonewall Jackson Middle School, and called the idea to change the name “ridiculous.” She repeatedly said it won’t bring back the nine people whom a white suspect with racist ideologies shot to death June 17 in a South Carolina church known for its historic place in the civil rights struggle.

“Yes, we have a large black population” at Stonewall, Jordon said. “No one’s ever complained about it. They’re proud of that school.”

(...)

“We’re lucky we don’t have these racial issues in our area, and we don’t need anyone stirring them up,” Jordon said. “… Thank goodness we don’t have slavery, but we don’t need to beat up on the people that did years ago. We need to move on.”


Board member Jim Crawford, whose wife graduated from Stonewall Jackson High, said he would have to listen to the discussion on the issue before making a decision, but said he sees many more people in opposition than in favor. He said Jackson helped teach slaves to read and write.

“What are you doing, trying to rewrite history?” Crawford asked a reporter. “That’s what it sounds like to me.”

- See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150713/GZ01/150719741#sthash.125K59ms.dpuf

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Examples of no racial issues in WV:

- A Charleston police lieutenant on paid administrative leave is under investigation for making racially insensitive video recordings, sources familiar with the investigation said.
(...)
Two sources who have seen the recordings say the videos depict Williams’ young daughter dressed in what appear to be articles of a police uniform and dancing to an anthem of the Ku Klux Klan. The refrain of the song repeats the words, “Stand up and be counted, show the world that you’re a man. Stand up and be counted, go with the Ku Klux Klan.”

On the videos, a man alleged to be Williams can be heard asking the girl questions. Derogatory racial language can be heard, sources said. Sources said there were several similar videos on the computer.

http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20141001/GZ01/141009983#sthash.N3RbNqTC.dpuf

-

Keith Judd, who is serving a 17 1/2-year prison sentence for extortion at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, took 41 percent of the vote in West Virginia’s Democratic primary Tuesday night — 72,000 votes to Obama’s 106,000.

(...)

In the 2008 Democratic primary, Obama lost West Virginia to Hillary Clinton by 41 points — even though her campaign was all but over.

In the fall, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) beat Obama in the state by 13 points.

Race likely plays some role here. In the 2008 primary, 2 in 10 white West Virginia voters said race was an important factor in their votes, second only to Mississippi. Those voters went for Clinton 8 in 10 times.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/why-felon-keith-judd-did-so-well-against-obama-in-west-virginia/2012/05/09/gIQA7GwtCU_blog.html

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Here's the link to the petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/change-the-name-of-stonewall-jackson-middle-school.html

[Botany]

1. We’re lucky we don’t have these racial issues in our area, and we don’t need anyone stirring them up

" .... stirring THEM up ... " R you kidding me?

Kind of like that Duck Dynasty guy who talked about how happy the blacks were in
the Jim Crow south before they got all stirred up by outsiders.

[gratuitous]

4. "We don't need anyone stirring THEM up"

If I had a nickel for every time that little phrase got uttered between 1946 and 1965, I'd have more money than T Rump. I'm surprised we weren't treated to the "outside agitators" line.

Note, too, how the issue is neatly dodged by saying that renaming the school (which used to be a high school, now it's a middle school, so the name is kind of a fungible commodity to begin with) won't bring back the victims of the Charleston Massacre. As if that's something someone has said!

[KamaAina]

2. Wait a minute. West Virginia only exists because it refused to secede

along with the rest of Virginia.

[surrealAmerican]

3. Just how do you wind up with an "all white school board" ...

... in a "majority black" school district anyway?

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

5. The county overall is heavily white

But the part of town that attends Stonewall is majority black

[KamaAina]

8. Even if it weren't, look at Ferguson.

Town: supermajority black. Government: nearly lily-white.

[struggle4progress]

6. The school was built in 1940, as a high school, seventy-five years after the Civil War

It was originally an all-white school in segregated WV. And Kanawha County was not exactly a leader in school integration after Brown v Topeka.

[struggle4progress]

7. People sometimes claim we don't know "Stonewall" Jackson's views on slavery

but he was in fact a slave owner