HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Marshall University President Jerome Gilbert says there’s no appetite on the Marshall Board of Governors to even consider removing the name of John Marshall from the school.
Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, owned slaves.
“You should not in any situation use a litmus test necessarily to say that if you’re a slave holder that you can’t be honored in any way. I think you have to look at the totality of a person’s life and put it into balance,” Gilbert said recently on MetroNews “Talkline.”
The Marshall BOG voted on July 7 to remove the name of Jenkins Hall from its education building. The building was named after Albert Gallatin Jenkins, a general for the Confederate States of America, a slave owner from Cabell County and Marshall Academy graduate.
“Removing the name will allow the board at a future date to honor someone who has made a significant and far-reaching impact on Marshall University through extraordinary public service, service to the university or a major monetary gift,” the BOG said in a statement after the vote. “The Board of Governors has carefully considered the name of every other campus building and concluded that this is the final step in a thoughtful, university-wide effort to make sure the people we honor represent the ideals of equality and justice embodied by Chief Justice John Marshall.”
Gilbert said the John Marshall situation is different when you weigh his entire life.
“Does it tip to the positive or does it tip to the negative? I think John Marshall’s live certainly bent towards justice on the positive side. I would say the same thing about Robert C. Byrd who was a Ku Klux Klan member and who atoned for his membership and apologized for it,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert said both Marshall and Byrd had issues in their lives but he doesn’t believe the issues tip the scales to the point where their names should be removed from buildings.
Gilbert said Marshall is revered as the greatest of the chief justices.
“What he did has set the path for where we are as a nation in terms of the judicial decisions that we have today,” Gilbert said.