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EGACY Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
WEDNESDAYS • Oct. 28, 2020
Good to Know General Elections will be held on Nov. 3, 2020. Polling hours throughout Virginia are from 6 a.m. - 7 p.m., and As long as you’re In line by 7 p.m., YOU will be able to vote.
Richmond & Hampton Roads
FRI NOVEMBER 20th @ 12PM
RIVERFRONT LAND
AUCTION
120 East 1st St Craigsville, VA Little Calfpasture River Frontage Tract 1: 80.97± Acres with 2703’ river frontage Tract 2: 112.96± with 3706’ river frontage
(434)525-2991 www.countsauction.com
Spor ts ma Parad n’s ise Previews 12PM to 2PM on Fri 10/30 & Sat 11/7 THE
Lynchburg VA 24504
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LEGACYNEWSPAPER.COM • FREE
VMI superintendent resigns after cadets describe relentless racism IAN SHAPIRA WP- The superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute resigned Monday after Black cadets described relentless racism at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college, and Gov. Ralph Northam (D) ordered an independent probe of the school’s culture. Retired Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, 80, has been superintendent of the 181-year-old school since 2003. During the retired four-star general’s tenure, multiple accounts of racist incidents have surfaced at VMI. Most recently, The Washington Post documented how one Black student filed a complaint against a White adjunct professor who reminisced about her father’s Ku Klux Klan membership last year in the middle of class. In 2018, a White sophomore told a Black freshman during Hell Week he would “lynch” his body and use his “dead corpse as a punching bag” — but was suspended, not expelled. After The Post’s story was published, Northam (D), a 1981 VMI graduate, ordered an independent investigation into the school, which received $19 million in state funds in fiscal 2020. In a letter announcing the inquiry, Northam and other state officials said they had “deep concerns about the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism” at the school. The school, whose cadets fought and died for the slaveholding South during the Civil War, has long
Ret. J.H. Binford Peay III, right, during an event at U.S. Central Command. PHOTO: U.S. Central Command venerated its Confederate past. But the college has come under increasing pressure from Black alumni and cadets to remove the campus’s statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, an enslaver of six people who taught at VMI. In July, Peay defended the statue of Jackson, calling him “a military genius” and a “staunch Christian.” Peay, who was born in Richmond in 1940, graduated from VMI with a civil engineering degree in 1962, according to his biography, which
has now been removed from the school’s website. In college, he was quarterback of the football team. In the Army, Peay served two tours in Vietnam War. Later, he became a senior aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, served as an executive to the Army’s Chief of Staff and then assumed command of the famed 101st Airborne Division, which he led during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf. By the early 1990s, then a general,
he was appointed as the 24th Vice Chief of Staff for the Army. His final role was commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command in Florida from 1993 to 1997, helping oversee military operations in 20 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Peay was highly decorated: He was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. He and his wife have two sons, both graduates of VMI. His grandfather, J.H.N. Peay Jr. was a member of the class of 1929.