Falls Church, VA

Success! J.E.B. Stuart High School will become Justice High School.

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J.E.B. Stuart High School, Falls Church, VA

The campaign to rename the J.E.B Stuart High School began following the 2015 murder of nine black parishioners by a white supremacist in a South Carolina church.

J.E.B. Stuart was a Confederate general who had no connection to Fairfax County, VA. He was well known for knocking John Brown out cold at Harper’s Ferry and taking his knife as a trophy, and that act made him a symbol for the “Massive Resistance“, the white supremacist pushback to school integration and the Civil Rights era. When the school was founded in 1959, the name was a commentary on the landmark supreme court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. It was this ruling that struck down the doctrine of “separate but equal” thereby opening the door to racially desegregated public schools, but in Fairfax County, VA, bureaucratic resistance meant that the schools weren’t integrated for another decade. For many years the school had Confederate imagery, including a yearbook called “The Sabre”, sports teams named “The Raiders” and firing a cannon when the football team was victorious. An image of the confederate flag appeared on the school’s basketball court and school jackets until 2001. The current student body is majority minority with second language learners from over 70 countries.

The school board has until 2019 to decide upon a new name, though the renaming process may cease abruptly pending a lawsuit filed by residents who oppose the renaming.

Rename Confederate and Segregation themed public schools in Fairfax County, Virginia

Change JEB Stuart High School’s name

Facebook group: “End Confederate & Segregationist Names for Public Schools”

The Washington Post has extensively covered this name change:

Oscar winners Julianne Moore, Bruce Cohen work to strip school’s Confederate nameA debate over a school named for a Confederate general divides a community
Remember the history of those who named the school, not just the namesake
Fairfax, Va., school named after Confederate general will get name change
This alumna of J.E.B. Stuart High School appreciates the name change
Could J.E.B. Stuart High become Justice High?