West Point cadets themselves may not realize it, but for decades they have passed by a plaque that includes a hooded figure and the words "Ku Klux Klan" on their way into a science building, reports USA Today. Now, a special panel appointed by Congress is encouraging the Pentagon to get rid of it. The KKK image is a small part of a larger plaque—itself part of a three-panel triptych—that stands at the entrance of the Bartlett Hall Science Center, per the New York Times. The panels about the history of America, created by the late artist Laura Gardin Fraser, have been there since 1965.
The issue is in the headlines because the Naming Commission, a panel set up last year by Congress, has called attention to it in a new report that "encourages the secretary of defense to address DoD assets that highlight the KKK." The current secretary is Lloyd Austin, a West Point grad who is also African-American, notes the Guardian. The recommendation is technically out of the panel's purview: Its members are charged with recommending name changes of US military assets that pay homage to the Confederacy; the KKK arose after the Civil War.
"The reason that we put that in there was because we thought it was wrong," Ty Seidule, a retired brigadier general and vice chair of the panel tells the Times. "When we find something that’s wrong, but it’s not within our remit, we wanted to tell the secretary of defense about that." A West Point spokesperson says the academy and the Pentagon are looking into the matter. In a statement to the Washington Post, the academy says the sculptor "wanted to create art that depicted 'historical incidents or persons' that symbolized the principled events of that time, thereby documenting both tragedy and triumph in our nation’s history." (More West Point stories.)
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