Gov. Youngkin directs VMI to accept controversial Confederate statue

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Gov. Youngkin directs VMI to accept controversial Confederate statue

Arlington Cemetery’s Confederate memorial would go to VMI’s Civil War museum at New Market Battlefield under plans agreed to by school leaders, which would require funding and federal approvals.

By Joe Heim and Ian Shapira
September 16, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT



Members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy at the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in 1922. (Library of Congress)

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked the Virginia Military Institute, the nation’s oldest state-supported military college and whose board members he appoints, to accept and place on property it owns 80 miles from campus a Confederate statue from Arlington National Cemetery that the Army has ordered to be removed by Jan. 1, according to a VMI spokesperson.
Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning.

The statue, a towering memorial that critics say whitewashes slavery, includes a frieze showing an enslaved Black man following his owner and an enslaved woman — described on the cemetery’s website as a “mammy” — holding the baby of a Confederate officer.

The Board of Visitors at VMI unanimously approved a motion Wednesday to accept the statue for placement at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War at New Market Battlefield State Historical Park — owned and operated by the college — north of VMI’s campus in Lexington. The battlefield is a focal point of the school’s history — it was there in 1864 that its cadets joined Confederate forces to successfully push back Union troops. An enormous mural mounted inside the college’s chapel depicts the VMI corps of cadets’ charge across the New Market battlefield.



A panel of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery depicts an enslaved woman holding the infant of a Confederate soldier. (Calla Kessler/The Washington Post)

It’s unclear, however, what conditions must be met for the Army to hand the statue over to the Commonwealth and who would absorb the cost of the transfer. The decision would require approval by the Defense Department and is complicated by a lawsuit pending in federal court that seeks to keep the statue in Arlington Cemetery. VMI in a release after the vote, first reported by Cardinal News, noted the school would need permission from “the Army and all the necessary funding from available federal or state resources for the project.”

{snip}

[Qutzupalotl]

1. Melt that shit down

Or build a giant shed around it and lock it up. No honoring traitors.

[Freethinker65]

2. To a museum with the historical value of the racism existing during its conception prominently noted

I could support it.

[GreenWave]

3. He spouted CRT bs, now this!