The Cavalier Daily editorial board penned a piece last week on the fifth anniversary of the Unite the Right rally calling for the University of Virginia to essentially cancel Thomas Jefferson.
“It is our belief that future education about Charlottesville and University history should be two things — mandatory and continuous. All students should be required to learn about Charlottesville and the University’s racist roots and more recent history, including the ‘Unite the Right’ rally,” the editorial board wrote in the Aug. 11 piece, titled “To create ‘citizen leaders,’ U.Va. must do more.”
The op-ed noted that Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer, the white supremacist organizers of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally that resulted in three deaths, are UVA alumni, and that the rally was organized around a generated outcry by conservatives over statues commemorating Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson funded by another alum, Paul McIntire, the namesake of the McIntire School of Commerce, McIntire Department of Art and McIntire Amphitheater.
The University’s “physical environment,” the board wrote, “upholds an enduring culture of white supremacy,” glorifying “racists, slaveholders and eugenicists with statues and buildings named in their honor.”
“There is a reason why Charlottesville’s local Klu Klux Klan Chapter hosted its inauguration ceremony at Jefferson’s Monticello tomb. There is a reason why white supremacists gathered with torches around Jefferson’s statue on the north side of the Rotunda. There is a reason why they felt comfortable marching through Grounds.
“Our physical environment — from statues to building names to Jefferson’s overwhelming presence — exalts people who held the same beliefs as the repugnant white supremacists in attendance at the “Unite the Right” rally.
“These buildings must be renamed and memorials removed,” the editorial board wrote.
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Chris Graham
