RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia’s governor is making sure the movement to take down monuments and statues memorializing the Confederacy doesn’t just stop there.
Now, Gov. Ralph Northam is urging Virginia’s school leaders to change school names and mascots with Confederate ties as well.
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In a letter Northam sent to school board chairs across the state on Monday, he said, in part, “It is time to change school names and mascots that memorialize Confederate leaders or sympathizers.”
Northam said that like the statues, the names of public places, streets and schools “send messages to our children about what we value most as a society.”
Northam said the financial costs of changing school names are “minimal compared to the generations that suffered through American slavery, the Confederacy, the Jim-Crow era, massive resistance, and contemporary manifestation of systemic racism, like the school to prison pipeline.”
This move comes as Richmond removed another statue on Tuesday, this time of Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, as the Confederacy’s former capital rushes to remove symbols of oppression in response to protests against police brutality and systemic racism.
READ THE FULL LETTER BELOW:
Gov. Ralph Northam's Ju... by Ashley Curtis on Scribd