Three bronze plates at one of the entrances to Bartlett Hall, in West Point depict the history of the United States. In the coming days, the US military academy will begin removing memorials to Confederate figures.
United States Military Academy at West Point via AP, File
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United States Military Academy at West Point via AP, File
Three bronze plates at one of the entrances to Bartlett Hall, in West Point depict the history of the United States. In the coming days, the US military academy will begin removing memorials to Confederate figures.
United States Military Academy at West Point via AP, File
NEW YORK — Before turning against U.S. troops to command Confederate troops, Robert E. Lee served as director of West Point, the divine military academy that produced patriots like Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower.
But in the coming days, the archives academy will remove a portrait of Lee in Confederate uniform from its library, where it has been hanging since the 1950s and put in storage. It will also remove the stone bust of the Civil War’s top southern general in Reconciliation Square. And Lee’s statement about honor will be stripped from the academy’s Honor Plaza.
The moves are part of a Department of Defense directive issued in October asking the academy to address racial injustice and remove facilities that “commemor or memorialize the Confederacy.”
That includes a trio of bronze plates, 11 feet high and 5 feet wide, depicting important events and figures in American history, including Benjamin Franklin and Clara Barton. But the oversized placards, dedicated in 1965, featured not only Lee and other Confederate supporters but also an image of an armed man in a hood, with “Ku Klux Klan” written underneath.
The parliamentary naming committee, which initiated the changes at the academy, noted that “there is a clear relationship between the KKK and the Confederacy.”
In an announcement posted on the academy’s website, Lieutenant General Steve Gilland, the academy’s director, said they will begin to adhere to the committee’s recommendations during the holiday season.
“We will conduct these actions with dignity and respect,” he said.
The United States Military Academy, officially known as West Point, was founded in 1809 along the banks of the Hudson River in upstate New York.
According to federal data, the school has about 4,600 students, two-thirds of whom are white and about 13% are black.
West Point is not the only facility under scrutiny by the congressional committee. It also recommends that eight other settings address symbols of a racist past.
The United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, renamed buildings and streets commemorating Confederate admirals or those who sought to perpetuate Black slavery.
More than half a dozen committee recommendations for West Point involved Lee, who graduated second in 1829 and later served as superintendent.
The committee recommended that Lee Barracks, Lee Road, Lee Gate, Lee Housing Area and Lee Area Child Development Center all be renamed.
The report said Lee’s military “is responsible for the deaths of more US soldiers than any other enemy in our nation’s history.”
Two other Confederate officers on the committee’s radar were PGT Beauregard and West Point graduates PGT Beauregard and William Hardee. The panel called for Beauregard Place and Hardee Place to be renamed.
The committee noted that it was not until the early 1930s that West Point began installing Confederate memorials, stating that they did so under pressure from the revisionist “Lost Cause” movement, which sought to rewrite the causes of the Civil War and describe those who fought for the Confederacy as worthy of honor for their sacrifice.
