Virginia Military Institute Removes Monument to White Supremacy

By Michael Harriot, TheRoot.com

A Confederate statue on the campus of one of Virginia’s oldest institutions is finally being removed after Black students spoke out about a campus culture that literally and figuratively worshipped the graven image of white supremacy.

Construction crews gathered at Virginia Military Institute on Monday to begin the process of removing the statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. The monument to the school’s most celebrated alumnus also served as the symbol for the institution’s oppression and mistreatment of its Black students ever since the 181-year-old military college integrated its ranks in 1968.

For years, VMI cadets were required to salute the Stonewall statue while “flaggers”—enthusiasts who revered the idea of a Southern white supremacist utopia—converged on the campus because, as one student told The Root: “It’s basically Confederate Disneyland.” Inspired by the George Floyd protests and annoyed by a September visit from Vice President Mike Pence, several students and Black alums began speaking out about the white supremacist culture that permeates the Lexington, Va., campus.

Photo: Sarah Rankin (AP)

The Associated Press reports:

The statue had been a subject of controversy for years, but the school had committed to keeping it in place in front of VMI’s historic barracks as recently as July. VMI said it will be relocated to a nearby Civil War museum at a battlefield where dozens of VMI cadets were killed or wounded.

Amid a wave of Confederate monument removals around the country in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, some VMI students and graduates called for the statue’s removal.

Peay said at the time that the school would change some of its longstanding traditions, such as relocating an oath ceremony from the Civil War battlefield. But he said it would not remove the statue of Jackson, who owned enslaved people, or rethink the names of buildings honoring Confederate leaders.

Read the full article here.

Learn more about the Confederacy and the current fight to have them removed here and here.

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