On August 12, Midland ISD’s Board of Trustees voted 4-3 to reverse a 2020 decision thereby changing the name of Midland Legacy High School back to Midland Lee High School. Apparently they are dropping “Robert E.” from the official name.
Matt Friez, a Midland ISD trustee, said at the meeting Confederate names had outgrown their controversy, and that removing confederate statues and place names was an attack on the “country’s heritage.”
Friez did not identify what heritage in particular he was referring to.
What Heritage?
“Heritage” or “defending our heritage” or “our country’s heritage” is a phrase often used to signal to others that the person holds racist or white supremacist views of one type or another.
For example, the Neo-Confederate organization Sons of Confederate Veterans affiliation policy calls their organization’s goal the preservation of their “Confederate Heritage”.
Some proponents of the name change argued they did not care about Robert E. Lee or his legacy. They wanted the Lee name back because of the school’s athletic history and tradition. That may be true. Other people and groups feel differently.
Robert E. Lee: Traitor or Hero?
Before the Slaveholders’ Rebellion, Robert E. Lee was a career U.S. Army officer. A graduate of West Point, he served with distinction in the United States’ war against Mexico.
He was so widely respected, President Abraham Lincoln offered him command of the Army to crush the rebellion in 1861.
Instead Lee resigned his commission and took up arms against his country he had served his whole life. He was given command of all of Virginia’s state forces, and ultimately, all forces of the confederated rebel states.
In doing so, he not only violated the oath he took to the U.S. Constitution, but he also became the principal architect of the greatest slaughter of his fellow Americans in U.S. history.
750,000 Americans are estimated to have died as a result of the Civil war. That was 2.5 percent of the population of the entire country at the time.
To put that into context, if something killed that percentage of Americans today, 8.5 million of us would be dead.
The Lost Cause mythology arising from Lee’s death turned him into a folk hero who despised slavery, but chose to defend his native home against Northern aggression. This was convenient because Lee was no longer around. Famous dead person arguments are notoriously unreliable. All we can assess are the limited facts we know.
Lee the Slaveholder
Lee inherited approximately 10 slaves from his mother in 1829.
He married Mary Custis, the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, and granddaughter of Martha Washington. She came from a wealthy family that owned hundreds of slaves. Reportedly, some of them belonged to the Washingtons at Mount Vernon. (The myth that the Washington’s despised slavery and freed all their slaves is also not entirely correct.)
Upon the death of his father-in-law, his wife Mary Custis Lee inherited several plantations, including the one that’s now home to Arlington National Cemetery, and approximately 197 slaves.
Custis’ will directed that his slaves be freed within 5 years. In the meantime Lee, as executor of the Custis Estate, worked these people hard.
Some of these slaves rebelled believing that they were supposed to be freed immediately.
According to biographical accounts, Lee treated runaways harshly and was directly involved with his overseers in punishing runaways trying to flee north.
Lee Stalls Freeing the Custis Slaves
He also petitioned for permission to keep these slaves in bondage beyond the 5-year period. This was denied, and he signed the instruments of manumission for these slaves in 1862, after the war was raging.
Robert E. Lee claimed, long after the war, that he had freed or sold all his slaves before the war, but there’s no documentary proof of this. The last record that exists of Lee himself owning slaves was in 1852.
Lee’s views on slavery and race accepted the status quo, and opposed all agitation for abolition.
In a letter to his wife in 1856, Lee wrote:
In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly interested in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things.
Read Robert E. Lee’s Letter to his wife Mary Custis Lee Here.
After the war Lee claimed he was glad of the emancipation of the slaves, and encouraged his former confederates and rebels to be loyal to the Union.
Of course he had a potential death sentence for treason hanging over his head for the rest of this life.
He told his youngest son in 1868,
“You will never prosper with the blacks, and it is abhorrent to a reflecting mind to be supporting and cherishing those who are plotting and working for your injury, and all of whose sympathies and associations are antagonistic to yours.”
While Lee submitted an application for amnesty and a pardon in 1865 it was never acted upon. Congress eventually granted him a pardon in 1975 which was signed by Pres. Gerald R. Ford.
Excuses for the General
Robert E. Lee has many defenders to this day. One common defense is he was a man of his time.
But Lee was not a provincial. He was well educated. He spent his life in the U.S. Army traveling the country and interacting with people in the North and South; in cities and rural places. He was wealthy and well-known in the halls of power in Washington and throughout the country.
The defense that he was a “man of his times” is no defense. If Lee supported the slave system his actions make perfect sense. If he opposed slavery, then he lacked the moral courage of his convictions.
Robert Carter III was also a man of his times. A wealthy Virginia planter he provided supplies and arms to the rebel forces during the American Revolution. He later freed all his slaves on moral and religious grounds staring in 1791.
Other planters did the same, or something similar, because they knew slavery was a great evil. Lee also recognized it as an evil system. Yet he did nothing about it until he was compelled by the law.
Fast Forward 100 Years
Without going into the history of reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era, in 1954 the Supreme Court struck the first of many death blows against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, .
Some schools began the process of desegregation almost immediately. San Angelo ISD joined several districts beginning the process of desegregation quickly.
When San Angelo Central High School opened in 1959, it was a desegregated high school.
Midland’s Robert E. Lee High School opened two years later as a whites-only segregated school.
Midland Lee and Civil Rights
A lot was happening in the country’s civil rights struggle when Midland ISD decided to name its new high school after Robert E. Lee in 1961.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott happened in 1955 and 1956, and then the Civil Rights Act of 1960 was passed and signed into law.
Sit in protests were happening all across the South. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was formed that year, and 1960-61 saw the famous “Freedom Rides” throughout the South.
But in Midland, Texas, the Board of Trustees was building a new segregated high school and naming it for Virginia “hero” Robert E. Lee.
High schools in Midland were not desegrated until the federal government intervened in the late 1960s. Court documents reflect segregation at Midland High Schools occurred in the 1968-1969 school year.
The elementary schools in Midland also had to be desegregated by court order, and that was not completed until late in the 1970s and early 80s.
Midland was not alone here. According to historical accounts, school districts in San Angelo and several other Texas cities were investigated by the U.S. Justice Department around this time, who determined schools in these districts were still functionally segregated, bringing them under control of federal courts for approval to all proposed changes. A situation that remained in place for decades.
Midland Lee was named after Robert E. Lee as a protest against segregation. That was a struggle the trustees at the time were committed to and that the District fought against until the Reagan era.
Judging by the recent vote, some of the people of Midland are still protesting integration to this day.
