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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. Both he and Lee, who commanded the Confederate army, are buried in Lexington, a bastion of Confederate idolatry and home to VMI.
In 2020, The Washington Post 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 podcast, released this week. Several of the activists appeared during a panel discussion this week at the SPLC’s Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC), 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, 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.”
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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