Three bronze panels at one of many entrances to Bartlett Hall, at West Point depict the historical past of the United States. In coming days, the U.S. army academy will start taking down memorials commemorating figures of the Confederacy.

U.S. Military Academy at West Point through AP, File

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U.S. Military Academy at West Point through AP, File

Three bronze panels at one of many entrances to Bartlett Hall, at West Point depict the historical past of the United States. In coming days, the U.S. army academy will start taking down memorials commemorating figures of the Confederacy.

U.S. Military Academy at West Point through AP, File

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

But within the coming days, the storied academy will take down a portrait of Lee wearing his Confederate uniform from its library, the place it has been hanging because the Fifties and place it in storage. It may also take away the stone bust of the Civil War’s high southern basic at Reconciliation Plaza. And Lee’s quote about honor shall be stripped from the academy’s Honor Plaza.

The strikes are a part of a Department of Defense directive issued in October ordering the academy to handle racial injustice and put off installations that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy.”

That features a trio of bronze panels, measuring 11 ft tall and 5 ft broad, that depict vital occasions and figures in U.S. historical past, together with Benjamin Franklin and Clara Barton. But the outsized plaques, devoted in 1965, not solely featured Lee and different supporters of the Confederacy however an image of an armed man in a hood, with “Ku Klux Klan” written below.

The congressional Naming Commission, which initiated the adjustments on the academy, famous “there are clearly ties in the KKK to the Confederacy.”

In a message posted on the academy’s web site, Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland, the academy’s superintendent, mentioned it might start complying with the fee’s suggestions in the course of the vacation break.

“We will conduct these actions with dignity and respect,” he mentioned.

The United States Military Academy, as West Point is formally recognized, was established in 1809 alongside the financial institution of the Hudson River in upstate New York.

The college has about 4,600 cadets, two-thirds of them white and about 13% Black, in keeping with federal knowledge.

West Point was not the one set up below scrutiny by the congressional fee. It additionally advisable that eight different installations deal with symbols of the racist previous.

The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, renamed buildings and roads that memorialized Confederate admirals or those that sought to perpetuate Black enslavement.

More than a half-dozen of the fee’s suggestions for West Point contain Lee, who graduated second in his class in 1829 and later served as superintendent.

The fee advisable that Lee Barracks, Lee Road, Lee Gate, Lee Housing Area and Lee Area Child Development Center all be renamed.

The report mentioned Lee’s armies “were responsible for the deaths of more United States soldiers than practically any other enemy in our nation’s history.”

Two different Confederate officers within the fee’s crosshairs have been West Point grads P.G.T. Beauregard and William Hardee. The panel known as for Beauregard Place and Hardee Place to be renamed.

It was not till the early Thirties when West Point started putting in Confederate memorials, the fee famous, saying it did so below strain from the revisionist “Lost Cause” motion that sought to recast the causes of the Civil War and depict those that fought for the Confederacy as deserving of honor for his or her sacrifices.