West Point moves to vanquish Confederate symbols from campus

By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN
yesterday

NEW YORK (AP) — Before turning against the U.S. military to command the Confederate army, Robert E. Lee served as the superintendent of West Point, the hallowed military academy that produced patriots like Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower.

But in the coming days, the storied academy will take down a portrait of Lee dressed in his Confederate uniform from its library, where it has been hanging since the 1950s and place it in storage. It will also remove the stone bust of the Civil War’s top southern general at Reconciliation Plaza. And Lee’s quote about honor will be stripped from the academy’s Honor Plaza.

The moves are part of a Department of Defense directive issued in October ordering the academy to address racial injustice and do away with installations that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy.”

That includes a trio of bronze panels, measuring 11 feet tall and 5 feet wide, that depict significant events and figures in U.S. history, including Benjamin Franklin and Clara Barton. But the oversized plaques, dedicated in 1965, not only featured Lee and other supporters of the Confederacy but an image of an armed man in a hood, with “Ku Klux Klan” written below.

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