LEXINGTON, Va. (AP) — The Virginia Military Institute removed a prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on Monday, a project initiated this fall after allegations of systemic racism roiled the public college.Around 9:45 a.m., a crane plucked the larger-than-life statue that freshmen were once required to salute off its base and slowly hoisted it to the ground. A small crowd gathered on the mostly empty campus in Lexington where Jackson taught, quietly looking on amid flurries of snow.
The statue was the latest in a long list of Confederate tributes to be removed across the U.S. in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the racial justice movement that followed. The college, which had resisted calls to remove the Jackson statue over the summer, changed course in October after The Washington Post published a story that described an “atmosphere of hostility and cultural insensitivity” at VMI, the oldest state-supported military college in the U.S.