West Virginia came to exist because that part of Virginia refused to
secede from the United States, and stayed with the Union in the Civil
War. More recently, a right-wing political movement set up monuments
to the Confederacy and Confederate generals, thus spreading an
erroneous idea of the state's history.
Now Republicans, who dominate the state's government and perhaps lean
towards white supremacism, want to make it illegal to remove or rename
those monuments.
It is possible to deal with a statue that supports the Confederacy by
putting up an opposing statue: perhaps of Lincoln or Grant, or some
West Virginian who fought for the Union.
However, when a building's name refers to the Confederacy, it would
not usually be feasible to override its message by building another
building nearby. Cities and schools in West Virginia should rename
those buildings promptly, before a new law can get in the way.
Putting up new monuments depicting West Virginia soldiers in their blue
Union uniforms would help teach the state's history. And if West
Virginia organized regiments of escaped slaves, like the 54th
Massachusetts, monuments to them would get the point across even more
clearly.
They surely deserve monuments.