Ted DeLaney, Conscience of a Roiled University, Dies at 77
He worked his way up from custodian to department head at Washington and Lee, then led a reckoning with the Confederate general its very name honored, Robert E. Lee.
Professor Ted DeLaney on the campus of Washington and Lee University in Virginia in 2015. His fondness for the school, his alma mater, was both wholehearted and complicated.Credit.Kevin Remington/Washington and Lee University
Published Dec. 29, 2020Updated Dec. 31, 2020
Ted DeLaney, who began his nearly 60-year career at Washington and Lee University as a custodian, accumulated enough credits to graduate at 41, returned a decade later as a history professor, became the school’s first Black department head and later helped lead its reckoning with the Confederate general its very name honored, Robert E. Lee, died on Dec. 18 at his home in Lexington, Va. He was 77.
Filed in In Memoriam on December 29, 2020
Theodore Carter Delaney, Jr, professor of history emeritus and former chair of the Africana Studies program at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, died on December 18. He was 77 years old.
Dr. Delanaey was a native of Lexington, Virginia, and attended a racially segregated high school. He turned down a scholarship to Morehouse College and instead worked as a gardener and waiter. In 1963, he was hired as a janitor at Washington and Lee. He later worked as a laboratory technician. In 1979, Delaney enrolled in his first class at the university and became a full-time student four years later. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1985 at the age of 42. He also had 15 undergraduate credits from Virginia Military Institute.