Before White cadets at the Virginia Military Institute asked Jeremiah Woods if he would have preferred being a house slave or a field slave, or if he would have preferred to marry, kill or have sex with George Floyd, or told Woods he was “so freaking Black,” he went to pray.
He and other first-year cadets, during the start of Hell Week at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college, were guided to the university chapel during a boot camp-style initiation that included predawn runs and hours of “straining” — holding a sustained posture with necks and shoulders tensed.
Inside the chapel, above the pews and bibles, hung an 18-by-25 foot painting of White VMI cadets during the Civil War, fighting for a Confederacy that wanted to keep people like him enslaved.
Woods looked up at the mural and tried to imagine the next four years at a place that has celebrated that fight.
“Before I graduate,” he told a friend, “that painting is going to come down.”
Over the next 2½ years, he pressed the institute to confront what he described as a culture that targeted Black cadets for their hair, tolerated and sometimes glorified the Confederacy and dismissed complaints of racism. Again and again, he said, he was told nothing was wrong.
Now, he’s lobbying Virginia lawmakers to overhaul the school’s governance and funding, arguing that incremental changes will leave its Confederate legacy intact and harm future Black cadets. His effort comes five years after a state-ordered investigation found widespread racism and sexism at VMI, and as tensions over diversity initiatives intensify nationwide. To some, VMI — now at another tipping point — has become ground zero in those fights.
The bills he backed, introduced earlier this year, drew quick backlash from school leaders, conservative alumni and even the Trump administration, which cast the legislation as a threat to a storied institution that produces valuable military officers.
The Defense Department “reserves the right to take extraordinary measures to protect the integrity of VMI,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote Feb. 3 on X, calling the issue a “direct national security interest.” The Pentagon declined further comment Saturday about actions it could take.
Democratic legislators have since narrowed the proposals, now endorsed by VMI leadership. One bill, which initially threatened the institute’s more than $34 million in annual state funds, no longer explicitly does so, but would investigate racism at the school. The other would keep governance under a VMI board but would limit the number of alumni who can serve.
State Del. Dan Helmer (D-Fairfax), who sponsored the first bill, said he removed the explicit funding review after VMI leadership said they recognize there is more to be done to combat racism and sexism, and said lawmakers would watch to see if they follow through.
In a statement, VMI spokesperson Sherry Wallace said Friday the institute has taken steps to make Black cadets like Woods feel safer and also to remove some Confederate imagery. She said VMI welcomes the chance to work with state lawmakers on issues raised in the bills.
Woods, however, feels Democrats have missed their chance to effect real change at the school.
“They’re not going to address the racism and ties to the Confederacy with the bills as they now stand,” he said. “Not if there’s nothing at stake.”
Drawn by the ‘brotherhood’
Woods began organizing against racism as a high school student in Florida, launching a social media campaign that posted recordings of a teacher questioning Black History Month and students using racial slurs. The effort prompted the district to create an anonymous reporting system and remove several administrators.
His first thought when he talked to VMI at a college fair: No way. He didn’t want to shave his hair. He didn’t want to follow such strict procedures. He wanted to go to the University of Hawaii and be by the beach. But VMI officials called him every week, touting the school’s “brotherhood spirit” and eventually helped him attain a scholarship from the Army.
On campus, Woods made fast friends. He joined Promaji, a multicultural club for cadets of color, who make up less than a quarter of the student population. Members shared stories of their experiences and brainstormed ways to make the campus more welcoming.
Yet almost immediately, Woods said, he felt targeted because he was Black. Administrators told him most cadets feel singled out and that race had nothing to do with it, he recalled.
He soon realized he had arrived to a campus still struggling to respond to allegations of sexism and racism decades after it began admitting Black and female students.
In 2020, The Washington Post published an investigation into alleged racism at the school, prompting then-governor and VMI graduate Ralph Northam (D) to order a probe into the college. The next year, that investigation found widespread discrimination and calledfor sweeping changes, including treating racist behavior and sexual misconduct with the same seriousness as honor code violations.
VMI’s longtime leader, retired Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, resigned. The board appointed retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins as the school’s first Black superintendent.
Wins introduced diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and made changes to the institute’s student-run honor court. The college’s governing board removed a vaunted statue of Gen. Stonewall Jackson, a former VMI professor, and took other steps to reduce Confederate ties. The changes angered some alumni, who argued they discriminated against White male cadets and erased history.
Woods said the policy changes helped.
But references to the Confederacy were still everywhere he looked: on buildings, a medal, a fund and an award, as well as on class rings, which include engravings celebrating the Battle of New Market, during which cadets fought and died for the Confederacy. Wallace said VMI leadership has modified the medal and award, and are reviewing the ring designs.
Still, Woods believed in what the institute was selling: a good education, practiced discipline, brotherhood and a promise to change.
Racist incidents punctured that belief. Woods said he was added to a group chat titled “Everyone and the black,” with a fried chicken emoji. Peers told him that all Black people are poor. A Black cadet told him that White roommates once locked him out, called him the n-word and made monkey noises.
Woods, by then on the Cadet Equity Association, reported the episode. “As a Christian and black cadet, I am asking for justice,” he wrote to school leaders.
VMI declined to comment on what disciplinary action it took but said punishment for the act described could include suspension.
In a statement, Wallace said Woods reported several incidents to VMI in November but requested no action. She said he signed a release allowing the school to discuss his records and had previously been mentored by VMI’s chief of staff and chief diversity officer.
The Post interviewed six other current and former cadets, many of whom recalled similar incidents of racism. They described a roommate arguing that slavery “wasn’t that bad” and White cadets repeatedly telling Hispanic cadets that immigrants do not belong at VMI.
The university sent a memo from student leaders, including cadets of color, who said VMI has been transformational, does not discriminate and does not deny its past.
A widening fight
Last year, as a board appointed by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin mulled Wins’s future, Woods worried about his own.
He also spoke to The Post anonymously for an article about lingering racism — worried that openly speaking out would be dangerous. Another cadet who gave their name for the article needed security because of the threats online after the article published.
The board declined to renew Wins’s contract without explanation in February 2025, drawing cheers from some alumni and calls of racism by others.
Rumors about Woods began to spread. It was Woods, the rumors said, who had persuaded other Black cadets to talk to The Post about discrimination at VMI. It was Woods, others said, who wanted to smear the university in the name of selfishness and victimhood. It was Woods, the users on an anonymous messaging app said, who must be punished.
“He’s in third barracks,” one post said.
“One of the first rooms,” another said.
Members of Promaji texted Woods in a group chat that his advocacy was putting a target on the club. “This is why we do not speak to reporters,” one wrote, according to texts reviewed by The Post. Another said people who spoke to The Post in 2020 helped VMI change for the better.
Woods felt going through the “right” channels, including contacting VMI leadership, wouldn’t achieve much.
“The victims are the ones that stay silent,” he said in an interview. “People who know what’s going on and refuse to say anything.”
Woods emailed the state legislature in April, where Black lawmakers, including Virginia House Speaker Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) and state Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy (D-Prince William), a VMI graduate, were concerned over Wins’s ouster. He pleaded with them to force VMI to change and engaged the NAACP, where he is now a youth leader. Woods said he believed the institute should exist, but it needed to strip its Confederate iconography.
He began researching VMI’s history, producing a 25-page paper detailing its ties to slavery and the Civil War.
In an October presentation to school administrators, cadets, community members and local officials, Woods proposed a memorial to enslaved and freed Black laborers who built and maintained the campus, with names engraved in stone. Woods invited Wins’s successor, retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. David Furness, but he did not attend.
He was told any memorial would come after he graduated.
Wallace said Furness was in D.C. at the time of the presentation but was supportive of the research. She said VMI is evaluating the memorial proposal.
Woods also explored leaving VMI. He wasn’t sure he could endure more threats, more slurs.
After Democrat Abigail Spanberger was elected governor in November and the party maintained control of the legislature, Woods sensed an opening. Democrats were itching to claw back control of Virginia’s public universities and unwind policies they saw as an overreach by Youngkin. And in one of her first acts in office, Spanberger appointed five members to VMI’s governing board, including Northam.
Woods contacted legislators again to ask for help.
In mid-January, Helmer introduced HB1377, which initially called for reviewing the school’s state funding. It came as a surprise to much of VMI, including its leaders and powerful alumni. Furness called an emergency address — urging the community to contact the legislature to oppose the bill while touting that the school had taken down some Confederate memorials.
House legislators later pared back the proposals — after VMI committed to changing the institution, Helmer said — and the measures advanced to the Senate.
“The proof is going to be in the pudding,” Helmer said in an interview. “If their words are not carried through with action, the General Assembly has other tools in the tool kit.”
Carroll Foy, who was in VMI’s third class of women cadets, said she expects the bills to pass the Senate and plans to support them. “VMI should not be obstructionist, but should take leadership and ownership of this,” she said. “The goal for me and many others is that VMI is forward looking and not backward facing.”
Carroll Foy also said she wants Confederate iconography to come down and trusts the board to take steps to do that while respecting the school’s history.
While VMI has removed some Confederate symbols, the mural in the chapel still stands. Wallace said a committee found it had “significance to individual contributions to VMI,” and after consulting an art historian, also determined moving it would cause irreparable damage. VMI added signage about the painting and a curtain that could cover it.
Meanwhile, the Virginia bills drew fresh scrutiny in recent days after five members of Congress — including Rep. Ben Cline (R-Virginia), whose district includes VMI — asked the Trump administration Thursday to review the legislation and monitor any task force that is created, among other requests. Parnell did not address a question about the letter in a Saturday statement, saying only that the bills require “our full attention.”
As the legislative fight continues, Woods will be watching. But not from VMI.
At the beginning of the year, he decided to leave. He didn’t want to be on campus when his advocacy came to a head.
On the day he moved, he didn’t tell his roommate his plans. He quietly packed up a U-Haul and drove the 200 miles east to Hampton University, a historically Black college.
Since his testimony in support of the bill to review VMI’s funding, he’s been the subject of more accusations, including in anonymous emails to his church, the NAACP and his new school. He’s also received emails from Black cadets and alumni recounting more racist incidents on campus.
“What VMI does next will show what it truly stands for,” Woods said. “Are you a Confederate school? Or are you a school that wants Black people to succeed?”
Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.
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