VMI, the famed Virginia Military Institute that employed Confederate General Stonewall Jackson and played an integral role in America’s Civil War, has moved to de-person the General in a Soviet-style purge of the school’s Confederate history, going as far as to rip Jackson’s name away from his own quotes which emblazon a portion of the school and re-attribute them to someone else.
Efforts to de-person Stonewall Jackson and erase the school’s rich Confederate history have been in the works for quite some time, as the publicly funded military school has long been a target of the radical left. Though they had previously been met with resistance, in 2020, as the radical left waged a Soviet-style purge on America’s history – particularly in the south – with the help of a new far-left state government installed in Richmond, efforts to snuff out the Confederate history of VMI – and Virginia as a whole – went into overdrive.
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.
The latest attacks on General Jackson come as the school faces heavy political pressure from Democrat Governor Ralph Northam, a 1981 VMI graduate who went by the name of “Coon Man” during his time at the school. Last year, Northam ordered an investigation into VMI after the school was targetted with allegations of racism and sexism amidst the massive left-wing cultural push of 2020. In December of that year, a century-old statue of General Jackson was removed from the school’s grounds.
Coincidentally, shortly thereafter, the school chose its first black Superintendent, Major General Cedric Wins, and during the 2021-2022 academic year, the school’s Corps of Cadets will be led by a female for the first time.