Under a vote passed by the school’s Board of Visitors, General Stonewall Jackson’s name will be removed from VMI’s Memorial Hall while a mural depicting the sacrifice of teenage VMI cadets who took heavy casualties in a famed charge on Union forces at the nearby Battle of New Market will be “contextualized.”
Taking things a step further, the school also voted to de-person Stonewall Jackson in a fashion reminiscent of the darkest days of the Soviet Union, erasing his name from beneath his own words of “You may be whatever you resolve to be,” from an Old Barracks inscription and a re-attributing it to someone else. According to local media reports, the quote will be re-attributed either to 19th-century educator William Alcott, Rev. Joel Hawes, or both – neither of whom appear to have had any link to the school in their lifetimes.
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