Bypassing Impending City Council Vote, Richmond Mayor Orders Removal of Confederate Monuments

1. Richmond may have been the capital of the Confederacy but Lexington, Virginia, where both Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson are buried, remains ground zero for the Confederate “lost cause.” The small liberal arts college named for George Washington who was an early benefactor of the school and Lee, who served as President of the college for five years following the Civil War, Washington and Lee, along with Virginia Military Institute (VMI), are the economic and cultural engines for Lexington and the lower Shenandoah Valley. There are currently at least two petitions in circulation among faculty and students to change W&L’s name (It was founded as Liberty Hall Academy, though a new name is yet to be put forward). A number of former students, myself included, have advocated for a new name since at least Charlottesville and likely dating back to when the school first admitted African-American students in the late sixties. The school plans to convert Lee Chapel (where Lee is buried) into a museum of institutional history; W&L is among the oldest colleges in the country and its role in the sweep of Southern educational history is significant, especially during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow eras. Lee’s story will certainly be central to that history, less as monument (his recumbent effigy is housed there) than as cautionary tale. I wrote to University President Will Dudley, in part, as follows:

   “Lee must not be forgotten–we can learn much from his racism and treason as well as Lee’s later efforts toward reconciliation and rebuilding. But he should no longer be honored or directly associated with a school that welcomes change and desires a leadership role in higher education. If Lee’s name and presence—and all the pain he represents to millions of Americans of all races–are finally laid to rest, then the School can not only participate in but help lead a country that is beginning to understand what e pluribus unum means, to say nothing of honoring the school’s own motto: non incautus futuri. “Not unmindful of the future” is not about erasing the past but attending to present, urgently needed change so that a future might even be possible.

   A name change will doubtless infuriate many former and perhaps current students and faculty; In all likelihood, it will negatively impact on present and near-term financial support for the University. But it will also open new doors to a future that openly acknowledges and celebrates values that matter in making a new, multi-racial classroom, a place where learning includes–no, embraces–difference and transformative possibility. While, perhaps, more controversial than the decision to admit women not so long ago, a new name will undoubtedly mean newer voices; stronger, more diverse programs; more justly deserved levels of support from all future generations of students, scholars, and donors.

   Let Lee remain in the shadows–furl the battle flags, close the door, turn off the lights. He will still belong to the University’s brutal, slavery-steeped backstory, but henceforth serving as constant reminder that racism afflicts white and black alike–albeit in degree and proximity that are light years distant from each other. That even old schools can learn from their own awful, bloodstained, and soul-stealing “lost causes.”
   Chris Crosman ’68

   PS Ever notice how France celebrates its artists instead of military heroes? “Pays de Cezanne…” on a roadside marker looking across the valley in Aix-en-Provence toward his constant motif and muse, Mont Sainte-Victoire.”

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