Good Bye: Washington And Lee University To Remove Confederate flags

The president of Washington and Lee University on Tuesday announced in a mass email to faculty and students that the battle flags of the Confederacy will be removed from Lee Chapel and that the university in Virginia will continue to study its historical involvement with slavery.

After a group of multiracial law school students calling themselves The Committee demanded that the college stop glorifying Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy as well as acknowledge Lee and the university’s ownership of slaves, President Kenneth Ruscio issued a lengthy statement in response. The students threatened acts of  civle disobedience if their demands were not met.

The students also called for banning neo-Confederates from marching across campus to the chapel on Lee-Jackson Day.

“I am happy that we made some progress,” Brandon Hicks, one of the Committee members said.. “Some of our concerns were met and some of them were not. We are happy with the removal of the Confederate flags from Lee Chapel and are in agreement with the placement of flags in the museum. That met our demands and is not in an area where students have to convene.”

The Roanoke Times reports, “The Committee found the flags particularly odious because students were required to pledge to an honor code in their presence.”

“The purpose of historic flags in a university setting is to educate. They are not to be displayed for decoration, which would diminish their significance, or for glorification, or to make a statement about past conflicts,” Ruscio said. “The reproductions are not genuinely historic, nor are they displayed with any information or background about what they are. The absence of such explanation allows those who either ‘oppose’ or ‘support’ them to assert their own subjective and frequently incorrect interpretations.”

According to the Times, the reproduction battle flags will be removed, and W&L expects to display original flags, on loan from the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, at the Lee Chapel Museum on a rotating basis.

In addition, Ruscio addressed the Committee’s other demands by saying he will ask the undergraduate faculty to vote in the fall whether to cancel classes on Martin Luther King Day. He did say he he would advise that they continue to teach and hold programs rather than sacrifice commemorating King’s life for a day off.

Ruscio further said that he takes pride in General Lee’s accomplishments as president of then-Washington College and will not apologize for “the crucial role he played in shaping this institution. Affection for and criticism of historical figures living in complicated times are not mutually exclusive positions, however, as scholar Joseph Ellis concluded after his study of Thomas Jefferson.”

Lee, he said, “was an imperfect individual living in imperfect times. Lee deserves, and his record can withstand, an honest appraisal by those who understand the complexities of history.”

According to The Washington Post, the commander of a unit of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Brandon Dorsey said, “It’s a disgrace for them to besmirch Lee’s military honor,” said Brandon Dorsey, commander of a unit of the Sons of Confederate Veterans based in Lexington. “As far as I’m concerned, they should go ahead and remove his name from the school. I don’t think they’re worthy of his name.”

Dorsey said the university was, “in effect, desecrating Lee’s grave,” and he predicted a backlash. “I don’t think we’ll let it stand. It’s going to be long, nasty fight.”

As a descendant of Lee’s, I say rip the flags down.

H/T: My friend @ComgenKDT with thanks.

By: Anomaly100