The Cavalier daily :: Friday, January 9, 1969 :: University of Virginia Library

One major topic of student
interest this fall has been the
question of where universities get
their funds. The Cavalier Daily had
discovered an interesting and little
known fact about where the
University got some of its funds to
build Memorial Gymnasium.

Back in 1921 an organization
"believing in the highest principle
of liberty, truth, justice, and
fraternity among mankind" pledged
$1,000 to the Centennial
Endowment Fund for the erection
of Memorial Gymnasium. The
organization was the Virginia
Realm of the Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan.

The following letter was
received by the Endowment
Committee:

To the University of Virginia
Gymnasium Fund Committee, the
Alumni Secretary, the President of
the University, and all other friends
of the University of Virginia.

Greeting:

Believing in the highest principles
of liberty, truth, justice, and
fraternity among mankind; among
at the ideal of cleanliness and
decency in life and character;cherishing
that soul of honor which is
Virginia's heritage; and filled with
the deepest devotion for the
University as an institution which
indicates virtue and fosters pure
American patriotism - we, the
Knights of the K.K.K., pledge the
sum of one thousand dollars, to the
University Gymnasium Fund, to be
paid on or before the first of
January, 1926.

We dedicate our gifts to the
bodies and souls of Virginia's manly
men - those who now enjoy the
light of life and those who wt
among the sable shadows of death.

Subscribed to, by
excellency the exalted Cyclops, his
Twelve Terrors, and his faithful,
mystic, Klansmen.

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,
University, Realm of Virginia,
Invisible Empire, 15 March, Year of
our Lord 1921, Year of the Klan
IV.

After reading the above, the
University might ask "With friends
like this, who needs enemies?" But
that was 50 years ago and the
Cyclops and his Terrors and his
mystic Klansmen are probably long
gone. After all, things have changed
since then - haven't they?