The Hanover County School Board voted 4-3 Tuesday night to change the names and mascots of Lee-Davis High School and Stonewall Jackson Middle School.

The vote signals a sea change in the overwhelmingly white county with an ugly legacy of racial segregation and animosity, and follows months of pressure by students, advocates and the NAACP to remove the names honoring Confederates from the public school buildings.

Lee-Davis High School, named for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, opened in 1959 during Massive Resistance. African-American students could not attend the school. Stonewall Jackson Middle, named for another Confederate general, opened in 1969, just months after the county submitted its school desegregation plan to the federal court.

“The decision by the School Board today was long overdue and a first step toward racial justice in Hanover County,” said Robert N. Barnette Jr., chair of the Hanover Branch NAACP and the state NAACP. “We are encouraged that the Hanover County School Board made the right choice today.”

Earlier this month, Gov. Ralph S. Northam encouraged school boards across the state to “evaluate the history behind your school names” and to drop racist names and those symbolizing oppression.

Mr. Barnette and the Hanover NAACP have been one of the School Board’s most vocal and consistent critics, filing a federal lawsuit last August alleging the Confederate names and mascots violate African-American students’ constitutional rights by forcing them “to champion a legacy of segregation and oppression in order to participate in school activities.”

While the suit was dismissed in May, the NAACP plans to continue its appeal, despite Tuesday’s vote by the School Board, Mr. Barnette said, in case the School Board drags its feet on the change.

No timeline has been given, although a new committee is to make recommendations for new names with public input. Principals Charles Stevens and Quentin Ballard of Lee-Davis High and Jackson Middle schools, respectively, are to work with their staffs and student bodies to select new school mascots, with the School Board having final approval on the new names and mascots chosen.