A plaque at West Point that drew attention this week for its depiction of a Ku Klux Klan member is part of a sweeping brass mural of close to 150 historical figures, and the KKK imagery appears to have been meant as a warning.
Sculptor Laura Gardin Fraser, in notes she left to West Point about the piece, referred to the Klan as “an organization of white people who hid their criminal activities behind a mask and sheet.” She presented the three-panel mural to the school in 1965, depicting several decidedly pro-Union images of the Civil War.
School officials released an art guide from the school’s archive on the three-panel mural, or triptych, Wednesday, Aug. 31, after the Klan image was criticized by the federal Naming Commission two days earlier in a report on Confederate names and memorials at the US Military Academy and Naval Academy…
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