In 1926, the poet and dramatist John Drinkwater, author of "Robert E. Lee" and other plays, wrote of W&L, "This Lexington university is one of the loveliest spots in the world." Jonathan W. Daniels, North Carolina author, newspaper editor and White House Press Secretary to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, wrote that it was "the South at its most beautiful: the green sloping campus to the red-brick buildings with the tall white porticoes...I wish it were the picture of the South. I wish, indeed, it were the picture of America." Washington and Lee History Professor Ted DeLaney, who was born and grew up in Lexington during Jim Crow and spent more than 45 years of his 60-year career at W&L, more than a quarter-century as a professor, including serving as the first Black chair of the History Department, said in 2019, "W&L is unique because the entire campus is a Confederate monument."