In the wake of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the US is grappling with the question of what to do about the statues, buildings, and monuments honoring the Confederacy. Among the memorials in question: public schools christened after Confederate leaders.
A great many schools fall into that category. In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center counted (pdf) 109 of them in 15 states. (This is the most recent data available, and may include schools and other memorials that have changed their names since the report’s publication.)
Of those 109 schools, 27 have majority African-American students and 39 were built at the height of the civil rights era—between the 1950s and the 1970s.
Most of these are named after Civil War generals, with the exception of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
Many of the states with Confederate-named schools are in the South. But Kentucky and Missouri (non-aligned border states), and Washington and Oklahoma, which didn’t exist during the Civil War, also have schools honoring the Confederacy.
Correction: This post has been updated to reflect that two schools in California are no longer named after Robert E. Lee.