Fairfax County Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk is opening a conversation on whether the Lee District should be renamed.”
As our county is in the midst of inventorying our public assets with names connected to the Confederacy, it’s important we have a conversation about the origins of Lee District’s name, and what its potential change would mean,” he wrote in a tweet.
Lusk is hosting an online community discussion Thursday, March 4, at 6:30 p.m. (register to attend here: https://www.bit.ly/2MdXvfD.
The meeting will cover the process of and reasons for changing the name of the district, which includes much of Huntington, Groveton and Hybla Valley (west of Richmond Highway), plus Kingstowne, Rose Hill and Franconia.
Community members will be able to provide input and learn how to get involved with a possible name change at the meeting.
Last year, the Fairfax County History Commission identified thousands of sites in Fairfax County with names possibly associated with the Confederacy and 150 “confirmed Confederacy-associated names.”
The Lee District was not one of those 150 sites, as the Commission was unable to definitively confirm where the Lee name came from. However, it is very likely the name is related to the Confederacy: The Lee District may not have been named for Robert E. Lee, the infamous Confederate General. It may have been named for Fitzhugh Lee, who was a Confederate officer, or other members of the Lee family.
The History Commission started its research in the summer of 2020 when racial tensions were very high across the country and concluded it by the end of the year.
When the report was released, Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk expressed concern regarding the history of his district’s name, the Tysons Reporter news website reported.
“I was hoping that there’d be something more definitive about Lee District, in terms of where its name originated, but it appears that we still have the same set of ambiguity,” Lusk said in December, when the Historic Commission released its report. “We will have to have a community conversation about this name of this district.”
Last summer, the Fairfax County School Board changed the name of Robert E. Lee High School, naming it for John Lewis, the congressman and civil rights leader who died in early 2020.
In early 2019, Fairfax County’s Park Authority officials changed the name of the Robert E. Lee RECenter to the Lee District RECenter.
