This Juneteenth, erase Robert E. Lee’s name, but not his history as this nation’s enemy | Opinion

Late summer at West Point is stiflingly hot. But, as a brand-new cadet standing nervously in military formation, I barely noticed. I was consumed with the environment surrounding me — tall stone buildings, manicured parade grounds and a few thousand future Army officers, all nestled into a picturesque Hudson River valley.

Among those campus buildings is Lee Barracks, a dormitory named for West Point graduate and Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Typically, more than 10 percent of the cadets living in Lee Barracks are Black. Many are the descendants of the enslaved Americans Lee fought to keep in bondage.

In January, Congress passed a law requiring Lee Barracks, and all military properties named for Confederate generals, to be renamed within three years. But the reconciliation among Academy graduates, veterans and many Americans will continue.

West Point was two centuries old by the time I arrived, with the rules and traditions to prove it. Freshman cadets — or “plebes” — are not only beginning their collegiate experience, but also a military career. Everything is new, and cadets, it seems, are required to memorize all of it and question nothing.

In four years, I rarely considered the audacity it took for the United States Military Academy to name one of its nine dorms after a traitor — a general who led an army against the United States in our bloodiest war. No man has effectively ordered the killing of more Americans than Lee.

Our country today — especially the South – is filled with monuments, schools and streets memorializing Confederates. Many were built in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, the barracks now bearing Lee’s moniker was built in 1962, but not named until 1970.

As a cadet, I knew who Lee was, but the name of a barracks across campus wasn’t a priority. Besides, there is a power dynamic at the Academy. That is, as a plebe, you’re powerless. You have no control over what you wear, when you eat and sleep, or to whom you’re allowed to speak. I couldn’t imagine having the mental space or permission to complain about Lee’s inappropriate veneration.

But after five years on active duty, a combat tour to Iraq and a decade in the civilian world, the question of Lee at West Point came up again.

It was a social-media discussion on this year’s commencement speaker: 1975 graduate Lloyd Austin, the first Black secretary of defense, under whom I’d served in Iraq. Predictably, a fellow alum used Austin’s race as an opportunity to share his point of view on Lee Barracks and the notion that renaming or removing monuments to Confederates is tantamount to “erasing history.”

And here, I took great offense.

The thing is, I am descended from a slaveholder. My third-great-grandfather is John McFarland, an antebellum plantation owner in Georgia. I am also descended from an enslaved woman named Penny, who McFarland impregnated. Genealogical analysis says I am 23 percent European and 73 percent African, but to see and know me: I am Black.

I can’t point to my Black ancestors’ names in Ellis Island’s logs, or trace my roots to the colonists. There simply aren’t many historical records for Black Americans.

So, I don’t know the proper names of my people, how many generations were enslaved or from where in Africa they came. Prior to emancipation, the lives of my Black ancestors were deleted from the record or never recorded in the first place. My family’s history was erased by my country.

Removing a traitor’s name from the institution that trains future Army officers won’t erase history. In fact, as the “Lee Barracks” sign comes down, let’s take care to ensure every book on Lee, every documentary, every historical record is preserved. Fill the West Point library with stories of his desertion, sedition and the war he waged against my country.

Lee was an awesome military strategist, and we must study him. We must analyze the Chancellorsville Campaign as we analyze the German Blitzkrieg. We must examine Lee’s victory at Second Manassas the way we examine the Tet Offensive.

We can learn from Lee’s leadership, but only as an enemy of the United States. Regardless of his internal struggles, Lee chose the defense of slavery over his oath of office. The United States Military Academy is no place to venerate a man who denigrated all the institution stands for.

As we celebrate Juneteenth and commemorate slavery coming to an end in the United States, let’s also celebrate the impending removal of Robert E. Lee’s name from West Point. For, if it was not obvious already, the two go hand-in-hand. Lee’s defeat and the freedom of my people are one and the same.

May every future cadet learn how to selflessly uphold their oath, and therefore be a better United States Army officer than was Mr. Lee.

Justin McFarlin is a former Army officer, graduate of the United States Military Academy, and a veteran of the war in Iraq. He lives in Central Florida.