Lee-Davis High School is located in Mechanicsville, Virginia, United States, a suburb of Richmond. It had about 1700 students enrolled for the 2015–2016 school year. LDHS offers a wide range of academic and extracurricular activities for its students. Stonewall Jackson Middle school is LD's feeder school. They participate in the International Baccalaureate program and host the NJROTC.
History
Lee-Davis opened in 1959 and received students from the consolidation of Battlefield Park and Washington-Henry High Schools. After the new high school opened, both Battlefield Park and Washington-Henry became elementary schools. Lee-Davis opened in the midst of Massive Resistance, as the State of Virginia opposed desegregation of its public schools, despite the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. After opening as an all-white school, Lee-Davis admitted a small number of Black students in 1963, but did not fully integrate until the 1969–1970 school year, after all legal avenues resisting full integration were exhausted.
Naming controversy
The Hanover County School Board named the school “in the memory and honor of two prominent members of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.” The two men are featured in the school's logo. The school's name and mascot have been contested at least since the school was fully integrated in 1969–70. That year, the Hanover chapter of the NAACP appealed to the school board, on behalf of black athletes, to remove the Confederate moniker from athletic teams because Black athletes didn't want to play as "Confederates." After a poll was taken of the Lee Davis student body, and it found overwhelming approval of the names, the principal decided to keep the name. In the fall of 2018, after riots in nearby Charlottesville occurred, a group of alumni, students, and local residents appealed to the school board to change the name of Lee-Davis as well as Stonewall Jackson Middle School, which is adjacent to Lee-Davis. The school board conducted another survey of community members who once again supported keeping the names. In April 2018, the school board voted 5–2 to keep the names. In August 2019, the Hanover County NAACP sued the Hanover County School Board in Federal Court on constitutional grounds. The suit was dismissed by a federal judge in May 2020. In June 2020, the Hanover County NAACP said that it would appeal the ruling. After the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, another local movement to change the name of LDHS arose. On July 14, 2020, the Hanover County School Board voted to rename both Lee-Davis and Stonewall Jackson in a 4–3 vote. New names for the schools were not announced at the meeting.
Lee-Davis has two competitive show choirs, the mixed-gender Madz and the women's-only New Horizons. Together with Hanover High School, Lee-Davis hosts a competition every year.
