Under Attack: Virginia Military Institute's culture is forced to
change - but how much?

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Rhonda Sonnenberg, SPLC Senior Staff Writer | Read the full piece here

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Friend,

Graduates of Virginia Military Institute (VMI) include some of the
United States' most illustrious leaders in government, business,
education and professional sports - Nobel Prize laureates and
Pulitzer Prize winners among them. Founded in 1839 as the
nation's first state military college, VMI even trained a young
Mel Brooks during World War II.

But VMI graduated the infamous, too - leaders who fought during
the Civil War to preserve slavery and destroy the U.S. - men
like Edward Edmonds, Confederate colonel of the 38th Virginia
Infantry; John McCausland, a brigadier general who served under the
"unrepentant rebel" Gen. Jubal Early; and Walter Taylor,
aide-de-camp to Gen. Robert E. Lee and later a state senator and
staunch defender of the Confederacy.

This deep-rooted connection to the Confederacy lives on in VMI
culture. The college's core identity has been inextricably and
purposefully linked with the "Lost Cause" and one of its
most revered and mythologized generals, Thomas "Stonewall"
Jackson
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. Both he and Lee, who commanded the Confederate army, are buried in
Lexington, a bastion of Confederate idolatry

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and home to VMI.

In 2020, The Washington Post

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exposed a longstanding, entrenched atmosphere of racism and sexism at
VMI - and an embedded reverence for the Confederacy so deep and
pervasive that it spawned several traditions. For example,
reenactments of the Battle of New Market, where VMI cadets fought for
the Confederacy, lasted until 2020, when outside pressure brought them
to an abrupt end.

The campus is, even today, littered with statues, memorials and other
tributes to the Confederacy.

Even before the exposé, a group of alumni activists had begun
publicly campaigning for the removal of Confederate iconography from
the VMI campus as part of a wider change they say is necessary to
replace an atmosphere that normalizes racism and sexism with one that
is tolerant, inclusive and welcoming to all cadets.

Their movement ignited a fierce and ugly resistance to change. After
some initial success, VMI's governing board has determined that
many of the remaining Confederate symbols will stay in place.

But the activists aren't giving up. Some of their voices can be
heard on a new episode of the Southern Poverty Law Center's
Sounds Like Hate
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podcast, released this week. Several of the activists appeared during
a panel discussion this week at the SPLC's Civil Rights Memorial
Center (CRMC)
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, along with the podcast producers, to examine VMI's attempt to
reckon with its past. The podcast launch and CRMC event coincide with
this weekend's commemoration of Juneteenth
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, marking the emancipation of enslaved people at the end of the Civil
War.

"When VMI allows Confederate memorials to remain in public
space, they are continuing to condone and even celebrate those very
same values," said Kimberly Probolus, senior research analyst
for the SPLC's Intelligence Project, who led the panel
discussion.

"Symbolically, this undermines the school's effort to
promote more sweeping and systemic changes to promote racial justice.
The fact that these symbols remain at VMI not only makes the campus
unwelcoming to students but also affects their ability to learn and
thrive. I'd love to see them do more to remove Confederate
symbols, which would send a powerful message that they are
serious."

READ MORE

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center

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