Drawings After Washington College Yearbook Photos of Students in Blackface

Canvas: Soft pastel, charcoal & charcoal pencil on raw canvas, under clear leveling gel
Frame: Pine wood, black acrylic & acrylic finish
2020

These two drawings were drawn after photographs that were published in Washington College yearbooks. The first image from 1957 shows the Kappa Alpha fraternity doing a mock performance of a Black church service. Later, in 1961, Washington College students are pictured in blackface performing a traditional minstrel show. It is important to note that in 1961 Thomas Morris and Patricia Godbolt, the college’s first African American graduates, were both enrolled at the college.

Throughout its existence, the Kappa Alpha fraternity has associated itself with the Confederacy and Robert E. Lee. Lee was the president of Washington and Lee University when the fraternity was founded there in 1865, and the order identify him as their “Spiritual Founder.” For decades, the fraternity celebrated the Old South through Confederate themed parades and balls and the Confederate flag was often displayed in the houses and at events thrown by the fraternity. In 2001, the national fraternity banned balls and went on to do the same with parades in 2010. But since then, some chapters nationally have broken those bans and celebrated the Confederacy publicly.

In recent years, several Kappa Alpha chapters across the country have garnered national attention for engaging in racist behavior. In 2017, following Trump’s immigration ban, Kappa Alpha members at Florida State University yelled racial slurs at a Muslim family on their way to protest the ban. In the summer of 2019, an Instagram photo surfaced that depicted Kappa Alpha members from the University of Mississippi holding rifles standing in front of the Emmitt Till memorial sign which was covered in bullet holes.

In the summer of 2020, the members of the Washington College chapter challenged themselves and the fraternity’s foundational connection to Robert E. Lee and its history of racism. As a result, the members chose to disband their chapter, Washington College’s oldest fraternity.