Lee Chapel - Megan Philips

I had visited Lee Chapel and the museum once before when I first came to Washington and Lee for my campus tour, but I left our class visit with a much better understanding of how the monument has changed over time as well as the differences in perception from the public and the university.

I found the history of the chapel’s use most interesting about the memorial site. There seems to be a recurring conflict surrounding the discussion as to whether the Lee Chapel in its shrine to Lee in its entirety or if has other purposes as well. As we learned, Lee built the chapel to serve as a student hub while he was president. The library, bible study room, and his office were all housed below the auditorium where the students would gather every morning, making the site a high-traffic spot on campus. After Lee’s burial in what was the library at the time, the chapel began to take on a memorial form. This explains why the entrance into the chapel does not give emphasized, direct eyesight to the statue past the stage that was added years after the building’s construction.

It was interesting to learn about how people perceive the space differently. After the United Daughters of the Confederacy allowed for the expansion of the chapel to provide room for the memorial statue and the burial of Lee’s family in the tombs underneath, the chapel took on the name “Shrine of the South.” With this new purpose added to the chapel, the school property began to take on a more public role. As Ms. Wilkins repeatedly emphasized, some feel that the main purpose of memory in the chapel should be about Lee’s educational achievements and that the space should still have the primary purpose of serving the university. However, I had a difficult time focusing on that side of Lee when his representations in the portrait and his recumbent statue portray him in his Confederate uniform. I feel like these portrayals would continue to shift visitors’ focus on the military history surrounding Lee.

I felt that Ms. Wilkin’s recollection of some of the complaints she received after the replicas of the Confederate flags were removed from the memorial space clearly showed the misconceptions of the purpose of the chapel. She recalled that some accused the decision to remove the controversial symbols as a form of desecration of Lee’s grave. Lee’s grave, however, lies in a different area below the statue, so therefore these actions were not desecration, but some continued to claim that the entire building is Lee’s gravesite. Meanwhile, the president’s policy requests that the Lee memorial be gated off, darkened, and blocked by flags during Washington and Lee ceremonies that take place inside the chapel. From the university’s perspective, the building still serves students in many ways besides allowing the public to commemorate Lee. Without understanding all of these views of the chapel, we can’t fully appreciate and form perceptions of our own.