RICHMOND, Va. โ A university in the former capital of the Confederacy will remove building names, plaques and other symbols that honor several of its past supporters.
The board of visitors at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond voted unanimously on Friday to remove 16 different references on campus.
School President Michael Rao formed a committee in 2017 to accumulate building names, busts, portraits and plaques that honor Confederate supporters, research their histories and begin discussions.
โThe VCU memorial landscape is dominated by ex-Confederates or those people who sought to perpetuate and revere the memory of the Confederacy, currently represented in the form of dedicated spaces, memorial names, plaques and statues,โ VCU history professor Kathryn Shively said.
Ginter refers to cigarette magnate Lewis Ginter, who at his death in 1897 left money for charities and public institutions.