We begin with this article from Richmond, Virginia. “Old Jeff Davis now lies on his back, his head bashed in, his right arm loose in its socket, his bronze pelt covered in pink and yellow paint, with scraps of tissue paper stuck to his lapel and collar. From 1907 to June 10, 2020, the people of Richmond looked up at this statue, set on a high plinth beneath a towering column on Monument Avenue during the height of Jim Crow racism. Today, they look down on him, just another object on display at the Valentine, a local history museum that also houses the studio where artist Edward Valentine sculpted this and other icons of the Lost Cause, which glorified the Confederacy and corrupted American history, education and politics down to the moment we inhabit today. Nearby, the museum has posted a history of how the statue became an increasingly intolerable symbol during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis, protesters toppled it to the ground. Across town, at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC), another Lost Cause icon sculpted by Valentine is on view. On Dec. 21, 2020, after a request by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), the bronze figure of Robert E. Lee was removed from Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol, where it had represented the Commonwealth since 1909.”
The article continues, “Today, it stands in a darkened, formal chamber of the VMHC, which reopened on May 14 after a 19-month transformative renovation and expansion of its exhibit spaces. The museum inhabits a sprawling complex, the oldest wing of which opened in 1921 as a shrine to the Lost Cause by the now-defunct Confederate Memorial Institute. The VMHC has preserved the mural room from that original shrine, its walls covered with heroic and hyperbolic Lost Cause imagery, sanctifying the defenders of slavery and treason. Lee and the murals have been recontextualized with interpretive signage that explains their role in perpetuating the lies of the Lost Cause. Since the Confederate memorials of Monument Avenue began coming down two years ago — part of a national reckoning with racist, offensive and historically false iconography — Richmond has emerged as a locus for innovative public history. The display of Edward Valentine’s statues in two different institutions points the way forward for reinscribing ugly symbols into a larger and ongoing narrative about racism. The renovation and expansion of the history museum foreground geographical and cultural diversity to create common ground for confronting the state’s ugly history not just of slavery and racism, but Native American dispossession. And across the city, vigorous groups with strong community roots have grown into formidable new voices for explicating a larger, more textured history of Richmond, beyond its Confederate past.”
The article also tells us, “It is almost as if the removal of the statues from Monument Avenue opened the flood gates of history, such that curiosity now flows freely through the whole of the city, enlarging not just the scope of what is considered ‘historical,’ but the city itself. With Monument Avenue just another boulevard in the center of town, Richmond itself feels bigger. And as its own sense of history expands, Richmond proves to the nation that our larger cultural divide over race is manageable, that it is possible to grapple with myths without erasing history and to empower new voices without replacing old ones. ‘We are in this really incredible moment right now,’ says Bill Martin, director of the Valentine, which is using the display of the Jefferson Davis statue to query its visitors about the role of public art and the future disposition of the removed statues. He sees this moment as an unprecedented opportunity for collaboration. ‘There are so many of us working together on weird projects, and we all like each other. We show up, we help promote each other’s projects.’ Among those projects are light projections, including of enslaved people onto the walls of the ‘White House of the Confederacy,’ where Davis lived. With support from the Mellon Foundation and in partnership with the Valentine, a group called Reclaiming the Monument, founded during the George Floyd protests, is now expanding its reach with projects throughout Richmond. Also funded by the Mellon Foundation is the JXN Project, which is working to reconstruct an 18th-century house once owned by Abraham Peyton Skipwith, a Black man born enslaved and later emancipated, who became the first known Black homeowner in 1793 in what is now Jackson Ward. The JXN Project has also developed an extensive website, built a robust lecture program and researched deeply into the origins and history of Jackson Ward, created in 1871 to gerrymander and nullify the voting power of Black residents. ‘Everywhere we look there is a grass-roots group that has a historical component,’ says Rob Havers, head of the Richmond-based American Civil War Museum, a collection of sites that includes the White House of the Confederacy and the Tredegar Iron Works. That may be a group looking to change a street name or erect a history marker for something well known locally but not otherwise acknowledged, or a group organizing walking tours of neighborhoods that played a key role in arts and culture or the civil rights movement. ‘There is a real impetus and energy, and if you are engaged in public history, the more history the better,’ says Havers.”
According to the article, “At the Valentine, it’s striking to confront the Jefferson Davis statue at close range. It isn’t a compelling likeness or work of art, but details that were all but invisible when it was elevated on a plinth are now easily legible. Inscribed on the column on which Davis rests his left hand is the word “Jamestown” and the date “1776,” connecting the leader of the Confederacy to the origins of English settlement in America and the Declaration of Independence — an appropriation of history by a politician who felt it was more fundamentally American to defend slavery than to accept the results of a free and democratic election. The official label for the statue is telling: ‘Jefferson Davis Statue, 1907 bronze with 2020 paint and tissue.’ Thus, the paint and tissue paper are interpreted not as damage, but as historical accretions to an object that continues to evolve. At the VMHC, the Lee statue sits directly on the floor. ‘You see it at a height equal to you,’ says Joseph Rogers, the museum’s manager of partnerships and community engagement. ‘It was never intended to be seen at eye level. That is a powerful action.’ Nearby, text panels resurrect a discourse that has been mostly forgotten or suppressed — contemporary anger from 1903 as people debated the propriety of placing Lee, a traitor, in the Capitol. A Union veterans’ group representative said it would ‘put a premium on treason’ and a congressman from Iowa decried the moral equivalence between those ‘who fought on the side of the Union and those who fought against it.’ It takes only a generation for a statue, or memorial, or historical myth, to seem like it was always there, a natural part of the physical and ideological landscape. By placing Lee next to voices that destabilize that ‘always there’ — reminding us that it was offensive from the beginning for Lee to represent Virginia — the VMHC shifts the emotional valence of this statue as profoundly as the Valentine reinterprets the Jefferson Davis sculpture.”
We also learn, “During the debate over whether to remove Confederate iconography from the public square, defenders of these works, including former president Donald Trump, decried what they said was an erasure or loss of history. What’s happening in Richmond today proves how wrong that claim was. When they existed simply as statues, these sculptures did little more than claim that reverence is due to the people they represent. Today, as the VMHC’s Rogers says, ‘it is their absence that is being interpreted.’ Asked about the display of the former Confederate icons, Enjoli Moon, one of the leaders of the JXN project says, ‘The fact that they are down, we are happy about that.’ But, she said, ‘It is important to preface this, we don’t care about the monuments.’ Her group is focused on Jackson Ward, known as the Harlem of the South, where in the last century thousands of residents were displaced to dig an enormous trench to contain Interstate 95. At the time, city leaders and other advocates explicitly endorsed the route through the African American neighborhood because it would protect heritage, meaning Confederate memorials; historic homes including the White House of the Confederacy; and sites associated with Virginia’s history as the capital of one of the original 13 states of the union. That meant the 18th-century cabin, built by Abraham Skipwith, would be torn down. Instead, it was saved by preservationists who moved it to a former plantation in Goochland County, once owned by a top Confederate political leader. It remains there, renovated and immaculate, like the pristine 18th-century houses at the Colonial Williamsburg history park, but with little connection to its original owner and his remarkable story.”
As the article continues, “Moon and her group want to re-create the cabin as a historic site near where it once sat, on a new plot just south of I-95. For Moon, re-creating the cabin would help expand understanding of Richmond’s Black community, including enslaved people who lived not on plantations, but in the city. ‘We are thinking everyone is on a plantation, picking cotton, but he could read, he was a clerk, and he would not allow himself to be referred to as a slave,’ she says. Skipwith was alive when the Republic was founded, and his life intersected with at least one signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Harrison V, who backed Skipwith’s 1785 legislation petition for emancipation. By the time the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, in 2026, Moon hopes Skipwith is understood not just as a symbolic founding father of Jackson Ward, but as a founding father of the Republic itself. ‘It is important to bring Skipwith into that conversation,’ she says. Rebuilding the cottage would add another point on the tourist’s map of Richmond, expanding the geography of its heritage sites. The bustle of recent historical activity in Richmond highlights the idea of expansion as a riposte to false claims of ‘erasure’ or ‘replacement’ that have dogged debates about icons and race. Expansion was also key to the remarkable changes at the VMHC. Until 2018, the organization was known as the Virginia Historical Society, founded in 1831, with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall as its first president. For decades, it operated primarily as an archive and research facility, amassing millions of objects, mostly books and documents. Although it hosted public exhibitions regularly since the 1990s, leaders of the organization were well aware of its reputation as a closed, elite and unwelcoming edifice. ‘The name was a hurdle,’ says Jamie Bosket, president of the VMHC since 2017. So, they changed the name and embarked on a campaign to become a history museum aimed at the general public. The pandemic shutdown in March 2020 accelerated a major architectural renovation, including the addition of 50 percent more gallery space and installation of new exhibits. ‘We saw what was happening around us, at times it was at the front door step of our museum,’ he says. The museum sits on what is now Arthur Ashe Boulevard, close to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, near Monument Avenue, on land that was once the site of a Confederate veteran’s home.”
The article concludes, “The result is a compelling new museum of Virginia’s full history, including its Native American origins, its settlement by the English, the arrival of enslaved Africans, the founding of the Republic, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and on to the events of the past two years. Among the new exhibitions is ‘Our Commonwealth,’ which covers the state region by region, from the Tidewater and central Virginia to the Shenandoah, the southwest and Northern Virginia, with its large, culturally and racially diverse population. That exhibition, along with a gallery of landscape art from the state’s five regions, provides a subtle but telling balance to the harder challenges the museum confronts, and meets, with grace. By highlighting forms of diversity that are commonly accepted as enriching — the diversity of food, music, dance, landscape and other folkways — the museum offers stable ground on which to address the ways in which racial and other differences have been exploited to divide the state. The result is a fully satisfying, engaging and often moving museum, that echoes in its tone what is happening at all levels of public history throughout the city. Nothing has been erased or replaced. Rather, history has been expanded, amended and reordered, with a tone that is neither wholly despondent nor celebratory. It is a mixed bag, warts and all, and much more interesting than a silent statue on a plinth demanding homage it doesn’t deserve.”
Staying in the Old Dominion we have this article about the opposition to the neoconfederate pseudohistorian Virginia Governor Youngkin appointed to the state’s Historic Resources Board. “Gov. Glenn Youngkin is facing calls to withdraw his recent appointee to the Historic Resources Board due to her recent comments defending the Confederacy and criticizing former President Abraham Lincoln’s role in the Civil War. Youngkin announced last week he had appointed Ann McLean, a historian and the founder of a Christian school in Richmond, to serve on the Board of Historic Resources. Shortly after, she came under fire for previous remarks defending Confederate statues on a Richmond radio show. On Monday, she returned to the radio show and seemingly doubled down. ‘I think the appropriate reaction here is disgust,’ Del. Cia Price, a Newport News Democrat and member of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, said Tuesday. … On Monday’s radio show, McLean said southern states had the right to secede and did not commit treason. She also criticized Lincoln for calling up troops against the Confederates. ‘Invasion, just like we see Russia invading Ukraine, invading a new territory was wrong,’ she said. ‘And so many people want to just flatten the whole Civil War to slavery, and of course we know slavery is not good. But I think slavery would have been outlawed in the South within five or 10 years, but they wanted to do it on their time.’ ” This woman is supposed to be a historian, but she displays no understanding of the history of the Civil War whatsoever. Last week I provided a link to her Ph.D. thesis, which showed some understanding, leading us to the conclusion she’s a liar.
The article continues, “During her previous appearance on the show in December, she objected to the removal of Confederate statues and said they were built to tell the ‘true story of the American South’ and its fight for the ‘sovereignty of each state and constitutional law.’ In a statement to The Virginian-Pilot, Youngkin spokesperson Macaulay Porter said the governor ‘supports preserving the history of Virginia and believes that the referenced statues should be preserved in a museum or another facility.’ Porter, however, noted that Youngkin disagreed with McLean’s comments on Ukraine and believed the comparison was inappropriate. In Youngkin’s statement last week, which announced several appointments including McLean’s, he said he was ‘confident in each member’s ability to establish a best-in-class legacy for our administration.’ ” No one can believe a word this woman says. Her thesis indicates she knows something of history, so we can’t chalk it up to not knowing anything, even though she doesn’t display any knowledge.
According to the article, “Jonathan White, associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, said he was confused by McLean’s remarks. ‘The Confederacy fired the first shots; the Confederacy broke away and started the conflict,’ said White, whose research focuses on the Civil War. ‘So under the definition of treason laid out in the Constitution, there is no doubt in my mind that fighting against the United States was treason.’ The professor also said he did not believe it was accurate to compare the Confederacy to Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February. ‘Lincoln was reacting, which is very different from what (Russian President) Vladimir Putin has done in Ukraine, where he has been the aggressor,’ White said. In a statement this week, Democratic Party of Virginia Chairwoman Susan Swecker said McLean was ‘ignorant of history’ and unqualified to serve on the board. The board considers nominations of historic sites for listing in the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places, and handles updates to historical highway markers or new preservation easements. Swecker further called on the governor to withdraw her appointment. … Price said she believed McLean should be replaced. But the delegate doesn’t expect that will happen. ‘We’ve asked for apologies and removals for previous folks, and he’s just gone on to appoint people who are in the same vein,’ she said.”
According to the article, “Throughout his six months in office, Youngkin has had multiple controversies surrounding race. Youngkin created national waves last January when he launched an email tip line for parents to report ‘divisive’ teaching practices in schools. He said at the time it would help his administration root out practices such as critical race theory, which teaches that long-standing structural racism contributes to racial disparities. Del. Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, later rebuked Youngkin from the House floor and said the governor was using racial issues to divide Virginians. More recently, Virginia Department of Health Commissioner Colin Greene, who was appointed by Youngkin, came under fire for an interview with The Washington Post in which he denied that racism has resulted in a public health crisis among minorities and downplayed the role race plays in health disparities. The Virginia State Board of Health formally reprimanded Greene and called his statements an ’embarrassment.’ Dr. Holly Puritz, a member of the board, told The Virginian-Pilot that Greene’s remarks were disappointing.”
One more time in Virginia, we have this story, telling us, “The scars where Confederate statues once stood along Monument Avenue are now covered with pavement or landscaping, and social justice protests have largely gone silent. But just across town, a statue of rebel Gen. A.P. Hill still towers over one of Richmond’s busiest intersections. Outside the State Capitol, whose chambers were emptied of Confederate iconography one night in 2020, Gen. Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson still stands in bronze atop a stone pedestal. To his left along Capitol Square: a statue of Hunter Holmes McGuire, the Confederate doctor who amputated Jackson’s arm and was a lifelong defender of slavery. To Jackson’s right: William ‘Extra Billy’ Smith, who served terms as governor both before and after being a general for the Confederacy. Richmond has drawn international attention for its efforts to confront the legacy of slavery and the Civil War, with some of its toppled icons now reinterpreted in museums or hidden away in storage. But the work of ridding public spaces of ‘Lost Cause’ symbols remains incomplete two years after the first monument came down. The remaining figures are a testament to how deeply Confederate heritage was woven into Richmond’s landscape, lingering despite widespread public sentiment that they should go. The subject flared up again this month when Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who took office in January, appointed a historian who defends the statues to the state Board of Historic Resources.” Her degree notwithstanding, she’s no historian.
The article also tells us, “The board — which primarily handles historic landmark designations and oversees historical markers — has not had a role in removing Confederate statues. But the appointment of Ann Hunter McLean raised questions of Youngkin’s intentions in changing course from his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, who spearheaded efforts to take down Confederate memorials from state-owned land. Asked whether Youngkin would seek to either remove the remaining statues or restore those that were taken down from inside the Capitol, spokeswoman Macaulay Porter replied in a written statement that ‘he firmly believes that we must not airbrush our history. The governor believes that we must not overlook or excuse the sins of our past but we must resist the movement to cleanse our history.’ Porter added that ‘the decisions to remove the statues were decisions made by previous administrations and politicians. Today, the governor is focused on inflation, education, and rising crime in Virginia.’ ” Of course, removing statues doesn’t “airbrush our history” or “cleanse our history.” That’s a claim that, at best, is ignorant, and at worst is dishonest.
The article continues, “State Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond), who heads the General Assembly’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission, said removing racist statues ‘is not whitewashing history. We teach history in school … but what we choose to memorialize on public spaces should reflect the values of the public.’ The fact that several remain in prominent spots is a measure of work left undone, she said. ‘Progress takes time, and Virginia generally and Richmond specifically had a lot of [memorials] … There was a pretty deeply ingrained support of them among the old-guard White power structure and it’s just taken this long to overcome that.’ Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney ordered about a dozen Confederate memorials removed from city property in the summer of 2020, but the Hill statue was a special case: It’s the only one that stands above its subject’s mortal remains. Hill was killed outside Petersburg in the closing days of the Civil War, his body buried first in Chesterfield County then dug up two years later and moved to Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery. Finally, in 1891 — with a grand new statue of Robert E. Lee unveiled on what would become Monument Avenue — Hill was moved a third time to a memorial just north of town anchoring a suburban housing development. Today, the intersection of Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road has a reputation as one of Richmond’s most hazardous as traffic whizzes around the big gray obstacle of the Hill statue. By early last year, the city had approved a plan to take it down, contingent on consulting with his family to relocate the body. City officials worked for months to identify and communicate with Hill’s indirect descendants — he had four daughters but no grandchildren — and in May of this year asked a Circuit Court judge to approve a reburial. The city paid $1,000 for a plot in Fairview Cemetery in Culpeper, Hill’s hometown, and lined up a funeral home to handle the move.”
According to the article, “The statue would go to Richmond’s Black History Museum, which is overseeing efforts to repurpose all of the city’s toppled Civil War monuments. Most of the statues are being stored under heavy security at a water treatment facility, though the paint-spattered figure of Confederate president Jefferson Davis is being displayed on its side at the Valentine museum — home of the studio where the likeness was created by sculptor Edward Valentine. Monroe Harris, chairman of the Black History Museum, said several other pieces are slated to go on loan for an exhibit later this year at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. But on July 1, a separate group claiming to be descended from Hill’s family filed an objection to the city’s plan for that statue. Represented by lawyer S. Braxton Puryear, who also took part in court battles aimed at saving Confederate statues in Charlottesville, the group agrees with the city’s reburial effort but not with giving the figure to the museum. Arguing that the site is a cemetery, Puryear’s court filing calls the monument a ‘grave marker’ and says the city has no authority under state law to dispose of it. The statue is the ‘personal property’ of the descendants, the filing says, and they ‘seek to Remove and Relocate to a place of Dignity and Discretion as a Cenotaph for A.P. Hill.’ … The city of Richmond filed a response on Wednesday, denying that Puryear’s clients have any claim to the statue and denying ‘that the intersection of Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road … is a cemetery.’ No hearing has yet been scheduled. Stoney’s office declined to comment on the case but issued a statement Saturday, after this story ran online, calling for ‘all symbols of hate and division’ to be removed from city and state property. The city has retained Team Henry — the same contractor that removed all the other Confederate memorials around Richmond — and said in court filings that the Hill monument could be cleared in fewer than 10 days once the court gives the green light.”
We learn, “Local residents have been hoping the end would come soon. The Hermitage Road Historic District Association passed a resolution in June 2020 asking that the intersection be cleared ‘expeditiously. We understand the reinterment process may take more time, so we ask that the statue itself be removed as soon as possible.’ On Capitol Square, the three Confederate statues survived even as the General Assembly voted last year to take down another figure on the square: Harry Flood Byrd, the former governor and U.S. senator who spearheaded the Massive Resistance movement against school integration. Former Del. Jay Jones (D-Norfolk), who sponsored the Byrd bill, said he had hoped to include the Jackson, McGuire and Smith statues as well, but was told by aides that jurisdiction over them was unclear. ‘It was my understanding that there is a patchwork system of which entities are responsible for which statues’ on Capitol Square, Jones said. Del. Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax), who served as speaker of the House during the Democratic majority in the 2020 and 2021 sessions, ordered Confederate statues and busts removed from House-controlled areas inside the Capitol in 2020. Workers carted them out in the middle of the night for security purposes. Filler-Corn said she determined that she had no authority over statues outside the building, which most likely fell to the governor. ‘Folks asked about those other statues and I knew I did not have the power or jurisdiction to remove them,’ she said. Clark Mercer, who as Northam’s chief of staff was instrumental in getting the giant Lee statue removed from state property on Monument Avenue, said he believed it would have taken action by both the governor and the legislature to remove the trio on Capitol Square. And after a nearly 18-month legal battle over Lee that wound up in the state Supreme Court, Mercer said the Northam administration essentially ran out of time. ‘Lee was our primary focus because that was the largest and most imposing monument to the Lost Cause in the world,’ Mercer said. He noted that Northam had removed language from an arch honoring Confederate President Jefferson Davis at Fort Monroe in Hampton in 2019 — a year before the social justice protests that led to the others coming down — and had been quietly laying the legal groundwork for removing Lee since shortly after taking office in 2018. ‘Perhaps we ran out of time, but we also had to prioritize,’ he said.”
The article concludes, “Mercer and McClellan both suggested that if the Jackson statue stays in its spot for now, new signage could help put it into historical context. Unlike the Hill memorial and those on Monument Avenue, which all went up during the era of Jim Crow, the Jackson figure on Capitol Square was commissioned while the Civil War was still being fought. A group of Jackson admirers in Great Britain funded the piece after the general’s death in 1863, but plans to ship it to Virginia halted when the war ended. Confederate veterans helped revive the effort several years later; by then, Reconstruction was in full swing. Ten Black members of the House of Delegates joined three White Republican colleagues in voting against spending state money to receive the statue, according to researchers at the Library of Virginia. They lost. When the memorial was unveiled before thousands of spectators in 1875, plans called for Black militia members to join the honorary procession, but Confederate Gen. Jubal Early prevented it. The presence of Black troops would be ‘an indignity to the memory of Jackson and an insult to all Confederates who shall attend the inauguration of the statue,’ Early wrote to organizers, according to the Library of Virginia. On a recent weekday, a small group of tourists on Segways paused outside the Capitol for a look at the row of statues. Grace and Michael Contopoulos and their two children, visiting from Westchester, N.Y., knew the memorials had come down from Monument Avenue and were surprised to see these still standing. ‘I would prefer them not to be here, personally,’ said Michael, 44. Son Miles, 15, was more direct: ‘For all I care, the bronze could be melted down and put into cars.’ “
Next we look at this article from West Virginia. “On Tuesday, local West Virginia news station WJLA reported that Skyla Nelson, a high schooler at the East Hardy High School in Baker, West Virginia, is attempting to call attention to racism at her school. However, other students are retaliating with even more grandiose displays of racism. ‘On the last week of school before this year’s summer break at East Hardy High School students started showing up for class flying the confederate flag in the back of their pick-up trucks,’ reported Scott Taylor. ‘Nelson believes the flags are a result of her conducting her own investigation into the use of the n-word by students at East Hardy.’ ‘The flags started popping up after Nelson exposed the racist language and handed her evidence over to school officials,’ said the report. ‘Over the span of two weeks I compiled evidence and pictures and videos and witness statements from other people in the school that has said the n-word,’ said Nelson. A racist slur on a desk and multiple uses of the n-word were witnessed by other students at the high school who gave Nelson signed written complaints. The n-word popping up on high school students’ social media. Nelson tells the station that she believes the flags are a direct response to a recent investigation she conducted where she says she ‘compiled evidence and pictures and videos and witness statements from other people in the school that has said the n-word.’ Asked by reporters whether she hates her fellow classmates for their behavior, Nelson replied, ‘I don’t hate them because they’re wrong and I don’t think they know they’re wrong.’ “
The article concludes, “In recent months, a number of racist incidents at schools around the country have drawn national controversy. In January, onlookers at a high school basketball game in Olympia, Washington made ‘ape noises’ at Black players. And in March, in Aliso Viejo, California, a prom invite video mocking the murder of police brutality victim George Floyd went viral.”
This article on the same subject tells us “Confederate flags are flying at East Hardy High School in Baker, West Virginia. One student said it’s another example of racism inside her school district and she wants to expose it. … On the last week of school before this year’s summer break at East Hardy High School students started showing up for class flying the confederate flag in the back of their pick-up trucks. ‘Nobody seems to care and it’s really disheartening to think about that,’ says Skyla Nelson who will be heading into her junior year in the fall. Nelson believes the flags are a result of her conducting her own investigation into the use of the n-word by students at East Hardy. After the Civil War, some adopted the confederate flag as a symbol of Southern heritage, but others see it as representing slavery and white supremacy. … A racist slur on a desk and multiple uses of the n-word were witnessed by other students at the high school who gave Nelson signed written complaints. The n-word popping up on high school students’ social media. During the last week of school, a social media post said ‘Friday wear anything you got that has an American Flag or confederate flag.’ ‘I know we need a lot more education on why this is wrong,’ said Nelson. Nelson handed over her investigation to East Hardy High School Principal Lori Nesselrodt who Nelson claims told her the school would investigate. ‘Have you seen the results of that investigation or not? Did she tell you?’ asked Taylor. ‘I heard around the school that she gave each student a warning even though some people have been reported two or three times before a warning and they have been going around school bragging and boasting about how they can do it again because they didn’t get any consequences the first time,’ said Nelson.”
The article continues, “WJLA has learned the East Hardy student handbook prohibits any form of racial harassment. A violation under the bullying category calls for lunch detention and not a warning for a student’s first offense. Heidi Flynn, a parent of students at Hardy County Schools, believes the school district is mishandling racism in the district. ‘Nothing has been done and it’s led to where we are now and that flags in our parking lots,’ said Flynn. ‘As a parent, were you notified that this was going on? No letters? No phone call?’ asked Taylor. ‘Absolutely not. It’s been so ignored. Nothing and that’s so sad,’ said Flynn. Hardy County Schools officials won’t comment on camera but tell WJLA that students are allowed to fly the Confederate flag. East Hardy High School Principal Lori Nesselrodt emailed saying:
I have not spoken to Skyla regarding any concerns related to the Confederate flags. The other concern regarding the alleged racial epithet was brought to my attention and addressed several weeks ago. I have no evidence indicating that this is a racially charged issue, and I respectfully decline an on-camera interview.
Thanks!
LORI NESSELRODT
Principal, East Hardy High School
‘What do you say to people who fly the Confederate flag, like these kids, who say it is my freedom of speech and it’s America I can that if I want to. How do you address that?’ asked Taylor. ‘Like you can do whatever you want but also would you fly a swastika? Would you fly other hate symbols that have oppressed groups for hundreds of years? You can but why would you?’ adds Nelson. WJLA reached out to the NAACP which has now started its own investigation, including reaching out to the Hardy County Schools Board of Education, to inform the school district that the NAACP will be watching closely when classes resume in August and so will WJLA.”
More proof of the strong link between confederate symbols and racism.
Student of the American Civil War 
[…] may have posted more in the last year than any other Civil War blogger, has an interesting look at how Richmond museums are recontextualizing their displays of Confederate iconography. He also looks at how a book by Ron DeSantis excuses […]