The COVID States Project #72: School Board Elections

The COVID-19 pandemic and the backlash against Critical Race Theory have led to increased attention to school board elections. To better understand who votes in these elections and who attends school board meetings, this report examines the demographic characteristics of individuals who say they attended a school board meeting in the past 6 months and those who say they voted for school board at some point in the past year.Turnout in school board elections has historically been very low. Although comprehensive sources of turnout in school board elections are lacking, prior research has estimated turnout in select races to be between 3% and 12%, with even highly salient special elections unable to top 30% turnout. Between high rates of uncontested seats and a lack of salience for these hyper-local positions, school board elections have rarely garnered much attention in the history of American politics. This has changed in recent years, with controversial issues of virtual schooling, mask and vaccine mandates, rules for transgender students, and concerns about how history is taught propelling school board elections to the forefront of numerous news cycles in recent months. The increased attention and salience in school board elections are demonstrated by the spike in the number of school board members facing recall efforts in the 2021 election cycle: According to Ballotpedia, there were 90 recall efforts in 2021, the highest number observed in the 12 years they analyzed. Local news have reported spikes in school board turnout in the 2021 election cycle, with Southlake Texas, Centerville Ohio, Virginia’s Shenandoah valley, and numerous other locales, reporting higher than usual participation.In the run up to the November 2021 elections, rancorous school board meetings garnered national attention and

Petersburg Besieged and the Shenandoah Valley

This chapter describes two crucial campaigns in Virginia between September and December 1864. The second Shenandoah Valley Campaign witnessed the destruction of Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s small army by Union forces led by Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan, while the Fifth and Sixth Offensives of the Petersburg Campaign trapped Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in its thinning lines around Petersburg. The essay also explores the political implications of the campaigns, as both sides waged war in the fall of 1864 with one eye on the congressional and presidential elections in the North. It furthermore examines the destruction of crops and other supplies in portions of the valley as an example of Northern “hard war” strategy, the use of African American troops, and the conditions faced by troops in the trenches. These campaigns marked the beginning of the end of the Confederacy’s capacity to wage war.

Introduction

The book’s introduction stresses that while a handful of historians have examined various aspects of the African American experience in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War era, the topic has been largely ignored or inaccurately portrayed. The introduction’s cornerstone is a historiographical discussion of how authors such as Joseph Waddell, John Walter Wayland, and Julia Davis—who minimized slavery’s role in the Valley, promulgated the myth that slavery was not important to the Valley’s agrarian economy, and wrote that enslaved people in the Shenandoah Valley were treated better than in other parts of the slaveholding South—influenced various authors. Finally, the introduction highlights the various primary source material, including freedom narratives, never before utilized by historians who investigated any aspect of the Shenandoah Valley’s African American story.

“In the Land of Bondage”

This chapter offers an overview of slavery in the Shenandoah Valley from the moment the first enslaved people reportedly arrived in 1727. Slavery’s importance steadily increased in the region from the era of the American Revolution, spurred in part by demand for hemp during the American Revolution, through the 1850s. Furthermore, chapter one examines the practice of enslavers renting surplus labor, various forms of resistance enslaved people employed in the Shenandoah Valley in the decades leading up to the Civil War, how enslavers attempted to subdue that resistance, and how enslaved people who escaped to points north carved out a new life for themselves. Examinations of these various elements reveals that although slavery might have superficially looked somewhat different in the Shenandoah Valley—enslavers working alongside those whom they enslaved or enslaved people not comprising as much of the total population as in areas where large plantations dominated the landscape—the experiences of enslaved people on an individual level did not differ at all from other areas. The Valley’s enslaved still suffered abuse, both physical and emotional, and desired freedom.

“The Effect Was Immediate”

This chapter focuses on how the Shenandoah Valley’s African Americans reacted to John Brown’s raid and how enslavers in the region responded. Although throngs of enslaved people and free blacks from the Shenandoah Valley did not join Brown’s army of liberation in large numbers as Brown had hoped, this chapter illustrates that once the Valley’s enslaved learned of Brown’s attempt to strike a blow against slavery they employed various methods of resistance including arson and killing livestock to show their support for Brown’s actions, unnerving enslavers. This chapter examines the efforts of not only whites in the Valley to prevent Brown’s attack from sparking a broader insurrection through an increase in slave patrols but also enslavers’ attempts to downplay the events of Brown’s raid, advancing the notion that enslaved people in the Shenandoah Valley did not support Brown and remained loyal to their enslavers. At the epicenter of this particular discussion is the story of Heyward Shepherd, a free black man who became the raid’s first casualty.

“Freedom to Slaves!”

This chapter’s central focus is how the Valley’s African Americans responded to the Emancipation Proclamation and Union general Robert H. Milroy’s enforcement of it in the northern Shenandoah Valley during the first six months of 1863. Additionally, this chapter focuses on the important roles filled by African Americans, such as Lee Jenkins, in General Milroy’s espionage operations. Furthermore, the chapter examines the fate of African Americans following General Milroy’s defeat at the Second Battle of Winchester. While untold numbers of African Americans escaped north into Pennsylvania, some of whom were seized by Confederates as they moved into the Keystone State, several hundred African Americans were captured by Confederate general Richard Ewell’s command near Stephenson’s Depot, north of Winchester, among them Lee Jenkins, who ultimately committed suicide to avoid enslavement. Through Jenkins’ story this chapter also explores the difficult decisions free blacks such as Jenkins confronted when seized by Confederates and impressed.

“To Call on All the Blacks”

Chapter 3 closely examines the experiences of the Shenandoah Valley’s African Americans during the Civil War’s first year. Initially, enslaved people believed that Union general Robert Patterson’s army, which entered the northern Shenandoah Valley in the late spring of 1861, might liberate them. However, as this chapter shows, the Valley’s enslaved learned that Patterson enforced Union policy at the conflict’s outset, which precluded Union soldiers from aiding enslaved people flee enslavers. Despite Patterson seizing freedom seekers and either returning them to enslavers or locking them up in the jail in Martinsburg, those who desired freedom remained undaunted. Freedom seekers hoped that offering something of value to Patterson, either labor or services as spies, might soften Patterson’s position, but it did not. Additionally, this chapter examines the efforts of some soldiers in Patterson’s army to defy his orders and aid freedom seekers. Finally, this chapter highlights the reaction of the Valley’s enslaved population to passage of the First Confiscation Act and the stories of enslaved people who fled to Harpers Ferry in late 1861 and early 1862, seeking refuge with Patterson’s replacement in the Shenandoah Valley, General Nathaniel P. Banks.

Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War Era

In Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War Era, Jonathan Noyalas examines the complexities of life for African Americans in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. Although the Valley was a site of fierce conflicts during the Civil War and its military activity has been extensively studied, scholars have largely ignored the black experience in the region until now. Correcting previous assumptions that slavery was not important to the Valley, and that enslaved people were treated better there than in other parts of the South, Jonathan Noyalas demonstrates the strong hold of slavery in the region. He explains that during the war, enslaved and free African Americans navigated a borderland that changed hands frequently—where it was possible to be in Union territory one day, Confederate territory the next, and no-man’s land another. He shows that the region’s enslaved population resisted slavery and supported the Union war effort by serving as scouts, spies, and laborers, or by fleeing to enlist in regiments of the United States Colored Troops. Noyalas draws on untapped primary resources, including thousands of records from the Freedmen’s Bureau and contemporary newspapers, to continue the story and reveal the challenges African Americans faced from former Confederates after the war. He traces their actions, which were shaped uniquely by the volatility of the struggle in this region, to ensure that the war’s emancipationist legacy would survive.

“This Causes Great Excitement”

This chapter examines the experiences of African Americans in the Shenandoah Valley from the beginning of 1864 through the Civil War’s end in the spring of 1865. In addition to utilizing a recruiting mission of the 19th United States Colored Troops (USCTs) in early April 1864 to discuss the challenges USCTs confronted, including the decision to enlist and the contributions they made to the Union war effort, this chapter also highlights the continued contributions of the Valley’s African Americans to the Union war effort via non-combatant roles, especially espionage. Of particular note are the efforts of Thomas Laws, an enslaved man from Clarke County, Virginia, who played a significant role in intelligence gathering for Union general Philip Sheridan during the 1864 Shenandoah Campaign. Finally, this chapter concludes with an examination of the simultaneous joy and uncertainty which gripped African Americans when they learned of Union victory in the spring of 1865. Although Union military success meant slavery’s annihilation, this chapter illustrates that African Americans realized they would confront an entirely new set of challenges in the postwar period.