West Point Removing Confederate Artifacts Including Robert E Lee Portrait
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point is starting to remove Confederate statues and symbols from its campus in compliance with a recent Defense Department order.
The process of having to remove the Robert E. Lee portrait and the other Confederate iconography was set in motion this past summer with the meeting of the federally-mandate group known as the Naming Commission that issued recommendations calling for the removal such artifacts, the renaming of buildings and other campus properties.
The recommendations were officially approved this past October by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Over this holiday break West Point, the country’s oldest service academy, launched what its superintendent described as a “multi-phased process” to either remove or modify displays that memorialize the Confederacy, which included putting a portrait of Robert E. Lee wearing a Confederate uniform into storage.
Lee, a U.S. military general appointed commander of the Confederate army toward the end of the Civil War, was a graduate and superintendent of West Point.
In addition to the portrait of Lee, West Point also is also removing bronze triptych that includes an image of a hooded figure appearing with the words “Ku Klux Klan.”
