Fairfax County Times 05-27-16 by The Fairfax Times

FA IRFA X C O UNT Y T IMES

feel like people would feel more pride for their school if they had a name where they know these are the values this name represents or this is a person I can look up to.” The campaign to change J.E.B. Stuart High School’s name started not long before a mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, S.C., on June 17, 2015 prompted many states and institutions to reconsider the use of names and symbols associated with the antebellum South, including the Confederate flag. In addition to its name, J.E.B. Stuart High School currently boasts a logo that resembles a silhouette of Stuart, who was known as the “caped Cavalier” and a symbol of the Confederacy’s “Lost Cause”, according to the Encyclopedia Virginia, which is published online by the Virginia Foundation of the Humanities and the Library of Virginia. Cohen, who currently resides in New York City but frequently returns to the D.C. area

to visit his family, recalls that the school’s basketball court and the letter jackets featured Confederate flag symbols when he attended. A graduate of the class of 1979, Cohen says that he didn’t know about the origins of the school’s name until this campaign to change it started, but he immediately wanted to get involved when he learned that students had spearheaded the effort. He believes the final decision should be up to the local community but contends that it shouldn’t just be a matter of numbers. “If minorities and social justice movements waited for the majority to give them rights, none of us would have rights,” said Cohen, who identifies as a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. “So, we reject the idea that majority rules in this case, but we do feel that it’s important to engage as many community members as possible so they understand why this is so important to people that the name get changed.”

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cerns about how much a name change would cost. According to estimates calculated by the school board, it would cost approximately $270,000 to change school facilities to reflect a new name and logo, along with a combined $300,000 to update uniforms and equipment for the school’s athletic teams and band. “We have so many better things that money could be used for. It’s not worth it,” said Malek Zubietafriteman, who graduated from J.E.B. Stuart in 2015 and noted that he thinks the school should keep its current name. However, Rowan says that the “Change the Name” campaign has already heard from community members offering to donate money to help cover the costs of a name change, arguing that people shouldn’t form their opinion just based on money. “I think school names are more important than most people initially think,” Rowan said. “It’s something that you carry with you to college and jobs…I

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other community members gathered in the high school’s cafeteria to debate the merits and challenges of a name change. Proponents argued that the racist history behind the name renders it incompatible with the values that a high school should promote, while opponents expressed concerns about the monetary cost of a change and the potential that a change would obscure history, rather than illuminate it. “One of my goals is just to talk about it and start a conversation,” Ananuel said. “I enjoy talking to both support and opposition, because it gives you a different outlook on it, even though my opinion doesn’t change.” According to an information sheet passed out at the community workshop meeting, the Fairfax County School Board gave J.E.B. Stuart High School its name in 1958 while the building was under construction. The school officially opened in 1959. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 after a series of cases now collectively known as Brown v. Board of Education that the “separate but equal” doctrine used to justify racial segregation was unconstitutional, requiring that all public schools in the U.S. desegregate. While historians say that FCPS underwent a peaceful integration process, the county utilized passive resistance to desegregation just like the rest of Virginia, according to a 2004 article in The Connection that details the county school system’s desegregation history. Defined as the opposition to a government through the refusal to obey laws, passive resistance included an open reluctance on the county’s part to desegregate schools, partially due to fears of losing state funding. FCPS didn’t start integrating until 1960 and completed the process in the 1966-67 school year after Luther Porter Jackson, originally a high school for black students, was turned into a middle school in 1965. Supporters of a J.E.B. Stuart High School name change say that the name was chosen as part of Fairfax County’s passive resistance to desegregation, not to recognize Virginian or Southern

includes elementary and middle schools in the Falls Church-Annandale area, as well as J.E.B. Stuart alumni. The survey, which closed on May 20, received almost 3,500 responses, with 56 percent of people saying they don’t support a name change, 35 percent saying they do, and 8 percent proclaiming they have no opinion. Some people at the community meeting on May 23 questioned the reliability of the survey. Ginwright said that she spoke to someone who had taken it twice. “It’s not a perfect tool by any means, but we did try to get a sense of the community reaction and also individual comments from people,” Evans said, adding that the comments are just as important as the poll results since they provide insight into where everyone involved is coming from. Opponents of the name change had their own criticisms of the school board’s process with some people saying that the county is moving too fast, prompting the board to scratch a community vote on a potential new name that was originally scheduled for June 11. “I think the process has not been adequate for everybody to understand both sides,” Falls Church resident Andre Billeaudeaux said. “We’re not asking them to not change the name. We just want it to be slowed down.” Billeaudeaux has a son currently in ninth grade at J.E.B. Stuart High School and a daughter who will attend the school soon. He says he opposes changing the name, because while he was part of an ugly side to U.S. history, Stuart also embodied traits like leadership and valor that might make him a fitting symbol for students. He also argues that changing the school’s name might create a “slippery slope,” asking why the focus has been concentrated on J.E.B. Stuart when Thomas Fairfax, the 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, whom Fairfax County is named after, owned and sold slaves. “If you hold the county, the city, the high school called Fairfax, and all the logos on all the police cars and the flags to the same standard you’re getting at J.E.B. Stuart, you’re setting up tension in the community,” Billeaudeaux said. Other opponents cited con-

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history by commemorating Stuart. FCPS also includes Robert E. Lee High School. The Springfield school opened in 1958, around the same time as J.E.B. Stuart, but it hasn’t received the same level of scrutiny from the county. “Right now, we’ve only asked the superintendent [Karen Garza] to do community engagement on this school, so it’s just focused on this school,” Evans said. According to Fairfax County NAACP president Shirley Ginwright, the county also built J.E.B. Stuart on land taken from black residents under eminent domain, meaning that the government took private property for public use while compensating the owners. While she disagrees with the notion that anyone opposed to changing the school’s name must be racist, Ginwright also disputes the idea that the campaign to change the name is based in a desire to eliminate the ugly or troubling parts of American history. “You have to look at how it impacted the community,” Ginwright said. “You’re okay that this school was built on land from black people but they couldn’t go to the school? Some people say you’re trying to change history. No, we’re trying to tell you history.” The students advocating for a name change approached the NAACP about their campaign a couple of months after they started it, and they quickly garnered the civil rights organization’s support. “We want to see a name that the kids can be proud of,” Ginwright said. The name change campaign gained more momentum when it attracted the attention of some prominent J.E.B. Stuart alumni, including film and TV producer Bruce Cohen and actress Julianne Moore, who attended the school but didn’t graduate from there. Moore and Cohen started a petition on the site Change.org suggesting that the county rename the school after former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The petition currently has more than 34,000 signatures. To get a sense of local opinions on the school’s name, the Fairfax County School Board conducted a community survey that was distributed by email or phone to residents in the area of the Stuart school pyramid, which

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