Washington and Lee: What's in a Name?
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
12 December 18
I'm very fortunate to live in Arlington, Virginia. It is by far the most
progressive place in the entire state. Barack Obama got 70 percent here in
both 2008 and 2012, and Republicans don't even bother to run for most
offices. Arlington has the best parks in the state, the best schools, and
it's routinely ranked as one of the best places in America to live, walk,
bike, or work. As blue as it has become, though, Virginia is still a
southern state. And there are remnants of the shameful side of the South
still around. Just by the Clarendon metro station, for example, in the
center of Arlington's restaurant and entertainment district, is a statue
honoring the county's war dead from World Wars I and II. But some names are
separated from others and have a letter "C" after them. It's meant to denote
"Colored," and it's meant to be exclusionary.
Similarly, the local high school is named Washington & Lee after George
Washington and Robert E. Lee. Washington actually owned much of the land
that now constitutes Arlington, including the property where my house sits.
Robert E. Lee, though, is the favorite son because he "defended the state,"
"showed his love for Virginia," and "stood up to the federal government," as
is taught in the state history classes here. I have to admit that it wasn't
until I was 18 years old and moved to the Washington area that I realized
not everybody in America is taught that Robert E. Lee was a traitor. Indeed,
I was taught that what he did was the very definition of treason - he "took
up arms against his country in a time of war." But he's still very much a
hero for many Virginians.
Still, Arlington has become progressive enough that enough people realize
having the largest school in the county named after a pro-slavery traitor is
the wrong message to send to the community. So a few months ago, the
Arlington County School Board decided to rename the school. They appointed a
board made up of a current high school student, a recent high school
student, a resident of the neighborhood, a member of the school board, a
member of the county council, and several members of the "community."
The discussions turned nasty almost immediately. Many Arlingtonians were
furious at the prospect of disrespecting the great general. They came up
with all the usual reasons: The Confederacy is a part of our history; Lee
fought for states' rights, not slavery; why fix something that isn't broken?
The eventual consensus was to keep the name Washington but to drop the name
Lee. A further consensus was that everybody seemed to like calling the place
W&L, so a search was done to find another person worthy of the honor whose
last name started with the letter L. That meant that the first few names
thrown into the hopper, like Mary McLeod Bethune and Martin Luther King
would not be considered.
The anti-change people - I don't yet want to call them racists - saw a
chance to take over the process. They came up with the idea to keep the name
Washington & Lee, but to say that Lee was Robert E. Lee's father, Lighthorse
Harry Lee, who had once served with George Washington during the Revolution
and was an army general. They were slapped down.
In the end, after contentious and angry debate, the committee decided to
change the name to Washington & Loving, after Mildred and Richard Loving.
The Lovings were residents of a small Virginia village called Central Point.
Richard was white, Mildred was black, and they fell in love. Mildred became
pregnant at 18 and, because interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia and
15 other states, she and Richard went to Washington DC to marry. When they
returned to Central Point, an anonymous tipster called the police, and the
Lovings were arrested on a felony charge of violating the miscegenation
laws, specifically "cohabiting as man and wife against the peace and dignity
of the Commonwealth of Virginia." Richard was released quickly, but Mildred
was held for more than a week. They pleaded guilty to the crime and both
were sentenced to one year in prison. They were released, but only after
promising to not enter the state of Virginia again for 25 years. They
returned to Washington.
The Lovings started a family, but they became homesick. Mildred wrote a
letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy protesting that she was banned
from her home state only because she was married to a white man. Kennedy's
office forwarded the letter to the American Civil Liberties Union, which
decided to file a case. The ACLU appealed the Lovings' conviction, but the
judge who convicted them, Leon Bazile, wrote, "Almighty God created the
races white, black, yellow, malay, and red and he placed them on separate
continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be
no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that
He did not intend for the races to mix." The ACLU immediately appealed the
decision. The case worked its way through the courts with the Lovings
patiently waiting outside of Virginia. Finally, on June 12, 1967, the US
Supreme Court ruled unanimously that miscegenation laws were
unconstitutional. Interracial marriage was legal across the country.
The Lovings were simple people. They never sought the limelight. They only
wanted to have the same rights that every other Virginian had. But they were
willing to allow their lives to be dragged into the spotlight for the common
good. They were selfless. They were quiet heroes who fought for something
because they knew they were right and the government was wrong.
Richard Loving was killed by a drunk driver in 1975; the accident blinded
Mildred in one eye. She rarely gave interviews after the court case,
preferring to simply live in semi-anonymity. Still, these two humble people
were accidental giants in the fight for civil and human rights, not just in
Virginia, but across the country. At the very least, a simple high school
could be named after them.
But there was surprising pushback - surprising because this is 2018, not
1962. When a decision was made by the Arlington School Board to make the
Washington & Loving recommendation, two committee members resigned
immediately. One member, a W&L parent, said, "I am departing with disgust
about a morally bankrupt process that has been directed, not facilitated."
He said that the committee was "too racially fixated" and "a joke." He said
the very name Loving was "a totally ridiculous and inappropriate name . a
joke, as far as I'm concerned." Another committee member said, "The
rationale for them [the Lovings] was they wanted to be happy and they were
willing to break the law to do so. These were not people of high stature.
They didn't accomplish anything other than being in an interracial
relationship."
Two years ago I would have told you that that kind of ugly, racist anger was
an anomaly, especially in progressive Arlington. But it's not - at least not
anymore. Why? Because Donald Trump has emboldened people to come out with
the worst parts of themselves. After all these years, after all the progress
of the past half-century, it's OK to be racist again. And it's OK to be
public about it. It's OK to carry tiki torches through the streets of one of
the most progressive college towns in the state shouting "Jews will not
replace us!" It's OK to strip funding for schools in the poorest
neighborhoods of our poorest cities. And it's OK once again to pretend that
a traitor, a man who took up arms against his country, a man who had (or
more specifically whose wife had) slaves and who was cruel to them should be
honored and venerated.
It's one thing to oppose Donald Trump because you don't like his policy
toward Iran or Cuba, or to disagree with him on education or his refusal to
recognize the problem of climate change. It's an entirely different thing,
however, to once again pit Americans against each other because of the color
of their skin or because of one's own feelings of racial superiority. Donald
Trump has done that to us. We can't forget it.
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John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior
investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the
sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage
Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a
result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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