Exploring W&L's Past

Today, June 19, is Juneteenth, an event sometimes referred to as “Emancipation Day.” It recognizes the day, in 1865, that enslaved individuals in Galveston Bay, Texas learned of their freedom. Two years earlier, on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln enacted legislation to free individuals enslaved within territories that the Union forces controlled. His “Emancipation Proclamation” was just one of many steps taken on behalf of and by enslaved individuals to gain their freedom. In Virginia most slave owners continued to hold people in bondage for three more years. Here in Rockbridge County, slave owners were still actively enslaving people between 1863 and 1865 and searching for them when they escaped. After 1865, countless black communities across the country selected a day (sometimes in January, sometimes in April to correspond to Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and sometimes in June) each year to celebrate their “second independence day.” There are several excellent resources to learn more about this holiday: National Museum of African American History 2020 coverage (link); Vox’s 2018 article on “Why celebrating Juneteenth is more important now than ever” (link); Association for the Study of African American Life and History, ASALH, article, “Why Juneteenth Matters,” by Dr. Shennette Garrett-Scott (link); and from W&L’s Professor Lucas Morel, an online discussion where he reminds listeners that the first emancipation occurred in April 1862 in the District of Columbia (podcast link).

Memorial Day began as an effort to honor and remember the veterans of the Civil War; it was originally referred to as “Decoration Day” because one of the key actions of remembrance was adorning the graves of veterans with flowers. The noted historian David Blight describes the earliest example of this commemoration which occurred on May 1, 1865 when “black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders’ race course” (the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club which had been converted into an outdoor prison for Union soldiers and later, a mass grave). Three years later, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, General John A. Logan, called on northerners to hold ceremonies and place flowers at the graves of dead soldiers. In contrast, many southern states established a “Confederate Memorial Day.” It was celebrated on different dates, ranging from the date of General Johnston’s final surrender to General Sherman (April 26) to Stonewall Jackson’s birthday (May 10). In 1971, the date of the holiday was standardized nationally to the last Monday in May (accordingly, this year it falls on May 25).

In 1876, several Lexington women formed a memorial association. They selected the first Thursday in June as the “memorial-day.” That year they asked John Thomas Lewis Preston (Washington College graduate 1828, Confederate veteran, one of the VMI founders and a professor) to give an address. One of the first issues of the Ring Tum Phi (May 28, 1898) announced the program for that year’s Memorial Day observance: President William L. Wilson delivered a speech in the chapel, followed by a procession to the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery where “the cadets [i.e., a joint VMI/WLU event] fire a salute, and the veterans of the Rockbridge Battery fire five minute guns.” Women played a critical role, “seeing that graves are fitly decorated.” Similarly, a few years later, in 1900, the procession to the cemetery concluded with cannon and rifle salutes, band music, and a tour of flower-strewn graves. I don’t yet have the archival evidence for the efforts of Lexington’s African American community to recognize the post-bellum dead soldiers, but newspapers in nearby Staunton indicate that the black community there focused on the “Federal memorial day” as early as 1873; the term emphasizes their focus on remembering the soldiers who fought for the Union.

After the end of the first world war, the observances expanded beyond the veterans of the Civil War (see mention above in the 1921 RTP). In subsequent wars, Washington and Lee University broadened their commemorative services to include the service and sacrifice of additional veterans. As mentioned in an earlier blog post (April 20, 2020), veterans from half-a-dozen wars are honored on the Memorial Gate that lies below the Colonnade. There the names of soldiers, sailors, marines, and pilots are inscribed in bronze plaques.

WWII veterans commemorated on the WWI Memorial Gate: The last post focused on a plaque that commemorates the male and female soldiers that attended an officer training school at W&L during World War II. There is a second pair of memorials to the second world war, located below the Chapel on a Memorial Gate that was erected in 1920, originally to honor the men who served in the Great War. The first WWII plaque (in the upper right-hand corner above) reads “To the Memory of the Sons of Washington and Lee University Who Sacrificed their Lives for the Cause of Freedom in the Service of Our Country and her Allies, 1941 — 1945.” Over 80 men are listed on the memorial; they range from the class of ‘06 to the class of ‘45. The oldest veteran, the class of 1906, was William Addison Ray.

Mr. Ray hailed from Belton Texas and entered Washington and Lee University in 1902. He returned to Belton after he graduated and worked as a bookkeeper for a Dry Goods store (per the 1910 Census). He served in the army during World War I. At age 56, he voluntarily enlisted in August 1940 (just before the September draft). The 1944 U.S. Army Register lists his awards, which include the prestigious Silver Star and a Purple Heart. He served in the 88th Field Artillery, Philippine Scouts. On April 9, 1942, he was taken prisoner after the surrender at the conclusion of the Battle of Bataan. He and thousands of Filipino and American prisoners of war were forced to walk over 60 miles on the infamous “Bataan death march.” After reaching Camp O’Donnell (the POW camp they were sent to), he died on May 30 at age 57. Lt. Col. Ray is recognized for his service on the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (excerpted in the center of the photos above, part of an ABMC memorial).

Plaques in Lee Chapel (cont’d): In the first two blog posts, I discussed a selection of the memorial plaques that hang in Lee Chapel. Over two dozen people are memorialized on these commemorative markers. Only two reference the contributions of women or African Americans. Only one woman is addressed by name: Bertha Stebbins of Natchez, Mississippi. In 1906, she married W&L graduate William McCutchan Morrison, class of 1887. For the next four years she served alongside her husband as a missionary in Luebo, a town within the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mr. Morrison and a fellow Virginian Presbyterian, William Henry Sheppard, brought the mistreatment of native peoples by King Leopold II of Belgium to the attention of the international community. Mr. Morrison also worked on a dictionary of the local language, Baluba; in honor of his contributions the Bakuba tribes nicknamed Mr. Morrison “Kuonyi Nshila (“don’t let the path get closed again”), while Mrs. Stebbins-Morrison was given a name that translated as “perfume of the alabaster box.” She learned Baluba and worked as a school teacher and an amateur nurse. They were buried in Luebo, but a gravestone memorializes them in the New Monmouth Presbyterian Cemetery, here in Rockbridge Co. (Credits: Rev. T.C. Vinson’s 1921 book, William McCutchan Morrison: Twenty Years in Central Africa,“ George Frank ‘19 Africana Studies capstone paper, Maggie Davis, Family Search gravestone photograph).

Student Memorial Plaque: 

The last post featured a plaque in Lee Chapel that commemorated a W&L student who died during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. Decades earlier, the first plaque that was hung in the building honored the sacrifice of another student, William Clarence Lynch, who drowned in the North (Maury) River while trying to rescue a fellow student after they ventured onto the frozen river to skate. Mr. Lynch was born in 1857 and drowned on Christmas Day in 1878 at age 21. He was the son of William B. and Jane D. Lynch of Leesburg. Mr. Lynch was buried in a family plot in the Union Cemetery (photo courtesy of Betty Frain @FindAGrave.com). His epitaph references his selfless act. Surprisingly, his death was also cited at the end of an 1889 article titled “A Youth’s Heroism” published in the “Sunday School Times” (vol. 31, p. 821). Another source of information about the plaque is “On the Walls and in the Foyer of Lee Chapel” (by Rupert N. Latture [class of 1915], W&L Alumni Magazine, 1979, pp.18-20).

Mr. Lynch’s drowning, as well as the deaths of several other students over the next several decades, was the catalyst for the swimming requirement, which is still necessary in order to graduate from Washington and Lee University.

An introduction: Exploring W&L’s Past.

In this post and the ones to come, I focus on historic people, places, events, and objects that have played a role in the origins and evolution of Washington and Lee University. As with today’s inaugural post, one of my goals is to contextualize the triumphs and tragedies associated with W&L within the broader timeline of American and world history. 

Given our current struggle to contain the COVID-19 virus, it seemed fitting to begin this blog with a local (Lexington) tribute to medical workers today and a memorial to a W&L Law Alumnus who lost his life in an earlier pandemic as communities battled an H1N1 virus that caused a global influenza pandemic.