A Virginia school named after a Confederate leader will now be named after Obama

The school board in Richmond, Virginia, voted overwhelmingly on Monday night to drop the name of a Confederate leader from a local elementary school and rename it after the first black president. The 6-1 vote confirmed that J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School will be renamed Barack Obama Elementary School, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. "It would be pretty awesome to have an elementary school in Richmond named after Barack Obama," said Liz Doerr, the District 1 representative.

Quite a few schools across the country are named after Obama, although the Richmond elementary school will be the first in the state of Virginia. Last year, a school in Mississippi also swapped out a Confederate name for the name of the 44th president.

Not everyone was thrilled with the decision in Richmond. "I am disappointed that we did not honor a local hero," said Carol Wolf, who was involved in trying to rename the school in 2003. Other names under consideration included Henry Marsh Elementary, after Richmond's first black mayor, and Oliver Hill Elementary, in honor of a local civil rights attorney.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

“And if we are honoring the Obamas," Wolf went on, "I would have preferred naming the school after Michelle [Obama] who was very active in this nation's schools."

Around 100 schools across the country still carry Confederate names, including 15 in the state of Virginia.