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After faculty and student government at my alma mater, Washington and Lee University, voted otherwise, and W&L launched a review, Prof. Lucas E. Morel wrote in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that Robert E. Lee should continue to be honored in the school name. https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/lucas-e-morel-column-why-lee-should-remain-a-namesake-of-my-university/article_5d6664f6-00e0-55e7-b567-0a10ae5b3403.html
I wrote a response of the same length which the paper declined to publish, but the column was also reposted elsewhere and continues to lead Google News results for "Washington and Lee University," though his opinion seems somewhat of an outlier. So I decided to tweet my response:
Lucas E. Morel's column on Washington and Lee University's name is nothing new
by Alex Christensen
Politics Professor Lucas E. Morel's July 28 column arguing my alma mater, Washington and Lee University, should retain Robert E. Lee's name, twists facts to echo familiar… (1/23)
by Alex Christensen
Politics Professor Lucas E. Morel's July 28 column arguing my alma mater, Washington and Lee University, should retain Robert E. Lee's name, twists facts to echo familiar… (1/23)
…false Lost Cause narratives long flogged by the school and others. I don't know why anyone sets out to defend Lee by repeating falsehoods and obfuscating history, but once one sets out to defend him there is little other path. (2/23)
Particularly misleading is his citation of Lee's "lobby[ing] for emancipation in the waning months of the [c]onfederacy, holding out freedom as a reward for those who served as soldiers." In, as Morel describes it, the "nation devoted to white supremacy and [B]lack…" (3/23)
"…slavery" they wished to create? It was last ditch straw-grasping. The plan, impractical, was not adopted. Time was up, as Lee fully understood. The proposal was not meant to emancipate anyone and never did. Most enslaved men who could have been enrolled in it had it… (4/23)
…proceeded had already been proclaimed by Lincoln as "forever free." (5/23)
Morel says, "in the final act of his life, [Lee] sought to heal, not divide," but Lee's post-War behavior was under military directive, at risk of his freedom. The school offered Lee refuge, when a wrong step would have seen him in irons. Lee took charge of a school… (6/23)
…devastated in large part by his own evil decisions. What Washington College gave him and what he returned may balance. It does not justify 150 years of honors. (7/23)
Lee did not name the school or its Chapel after himself and discouraged statues like his, which mars the Chapel. It commemorates the "confederacy," Lee's service to it and its ideology, as does the name, as planned, in white supremacist form, design and intent. (8/23)
Washington was Lee's hero. Washington never heard of Lee. Morel says Lee followed in Washington's footsteps. Lee nipped his heels. Lee's life shows he knew nothing of Washington but the most outward appearances. (9/23)
Morel says, "Lee could have endorsed guerilla warfare, undermined Reconstruction and fomented civil resentment over emancipation. With the eyes of the South (and the North) upon him, he chose not to." We know Washington College students attacked and sexually assaulted… (10/23)
…Black local residents, including schoolgirls, and he did not punish many strictly or harshly. We know he didn't disband Washington College's student hate group except after a military order. We do not know what he might have done if the guns of the North had not… (11/23)
…defeated him, if he had not been eventually in poor health, worn from years of treason. His 1866 sworn testimony to Congress, in which he lied and recommended the removal of Black people from Virginia, 40 percent of the population, both undermined Reconstruction and… (12/23)
…stoked resentment. (13/23)
Naming the school for Lee undermined Black freedom. Lee annexed the law school. What was the legacy? 25 years after his death, 12 years after Lee's Chapel statue debuted, W&L's first yearbook opens the law school section with a cartoon captioned "Law Class." The top… (14/23)
…right shows a white lawyer representing what appears to be a racial minority defendant, two members of an all-white jury attentive, judge dozing. The bottom left shows a white man, perhaps the defense lawyer or a juryman, about to hang the defendant. Read left to… (15/23)
…right, the outcome is predetermined, Jim Crow justice, no real due process: legalized white supremacist violence the goal of Washington and Lee law training then. (16/23)
[You can see the cartoon described above on p. 59 of the 1895 Washington and Lee University Calyx yearbook, downloadable here (WARNING: extremely sensitive content including racism and violence): https://dspace.wlu.edu/handle/11021/26930] (17/23)
Racist times are no excuse. It's not a joke. At least two-thirds of yearbooks from 1895 to 1920 contain racist cartoons and slurs, depictions of violence and the worst racist degradations, alternating with simpering Lee worship. W&L graduates of the time went on to… (18/23)
…legislate and practice Jim Crow with unjust and deadly results. (19/23)
W&L came late to integration in 1966, despite providing the first college education to a Black student in America, during Washington's lifetime. Despite progress, it lags in diversity so much its accreditation by various educational groups may be endangered. Is that the… (20/23)
…future to which W&L aspires? Lee in its name subverts education and its stated mission. He should not be honored based on distorted history. (21/23)
Morel's charge of ingratitude to those who favor removing Lee's name is trumped up. In 1870, abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked, "Is it not about time that this bombastic laudation of the rebel chief should cease?" It was time, 150 years ago. It was a rhetorical… (22/23)
…question. "[Lee] was a traitor and can be made nothing else," Douglass concluded. (23/23)
