‘A long time coming’: Iconic Robert E. Lee statue in Virginia to be removed after 130 years
By
RICHMOND, Va. – David Harris Jr.,
a nephew of humanitarian and tennis legend Arthur Ashe, tried for
decades to get a street named after his uncle in Richmond, the hometown
that once denied Ashe access to segregated public tennis courts.
Finally,
in 2019, the City Council approved the renaming over the objections of
some city residents. So it was gratifying, Harris said, to see
Virginia’s governor announce plans to remove an iconic statue of
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee after days of protests over the death of
George Floyd.
“My hat is off to them for getting
this done,” Harris said Friday. “It took me 25 years to get the street
name changed. I commend these young folks for getting these guys to see
it within a week and a half.”
In recent days, amid an extraordinary outpouring of
grief over Floyd’s death, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has pledged to
remove the Lee statue, while city leaders have also committed to taking
down the other four Confederate memorials along Richmond’s prestigious
Monument Avenue.
The changes amount to a reshaping
of how one of America’s most historic cities tells its story in its
public spaces – and a rethinking of whom it glorifies.
“It’s
been a long time coming. … We’ve tried marches, petitions, protests,
going to city council” to get the Confederate monuments removed, said
Phil Wilayto, a longtime community organizer and activist with the
Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. “And it took
what is in effect a mass uprising of the community to say these things
are not acceptable.”
Republican lawmakers,
Confederate heritage groups and a Monument Avenue preservation group
have criticized the decisions. Many have equated the monuments’ removal
to erasing history.
“Attempts to eradicate instead of contextualizing history invariably fail,” Senate GOP leaders said in a statement.
Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, died after a white
officer jammed his knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes as other
officers watched. Video captured Floyd’s arrest and final moments, and
his death has sparked protests around the world that demonstrators have
vowed to turn into a sustained movement focused on addressing racial
injustice.
The Richmond monument decisions, part of
a wave of Confederate monument removals around the country, has stunned
some observers in this former capital of the Confederacy, a place where
even three years ago many residents said they considered removing the
statues impractical, or nearly impossible due to a state law that
protected war memorials.
Late
Saturday, a small group of demonstrators toppled a statue o f
Confederate Gen. Williams Carter Wickham in Monroe Park, a Richmond
police spokeswoman said. She said she did not know if there were any
arrests or damage done to the statue.
The new
Democratic majority at the General Assembly rewrote that law earlier
this year, an effort led by black women lawmakers. It will take effect
July 1, giving Richmond and other localities around the state permission
to do as they please. The Lee statue, meanwhile, was on state property.
“Yes,
that statue has been there for a long time,” Northam said Thursday.
“But it was wrong then, and it is wrong now. So we’re taking it down.”
The
idea to erect a monument to Lee originated “within hours” of his death,
according to a National Register of Historic Places nomination form.
Two rival campaigns to raise money for the memorial dragged on for more
than 15 years, and the selected site was a gift of a prominent Richmond
businessman, the documents show.
The statue was the
first of five Confederate monuments to be erected on Richmond’s
Monument Avenue. It was unveiled in May 1890, at a time when the Civil
War and Reconstruction were long over, and Jim Crow racial segregation
laws were on the rise.
The statue arrived in
Richmond in pieces from France, where it was created. Thousands of
Virginians used wagons to help pull the pieces for more than a mile to
what was then an empty field. That field is now part of Monument Avenue,
the city’s grandest boulevard and one that’s been visited over the
years by dignitaries including then-British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth.
To
white citizens in the late 19th century, the statue of Lee, a Civil War
hero and native Virginian, was a cause for celebration. Some even saved
pieces of the rope used to haul the statue as souvenirs.
But
black citizens felt a deep-seated animosity toward the statue, seeing
it as a glorification of slavery, the Civil War and their treatment as
second-class citizens, said Julian Hayter, a historian and professor of
leadership studies at the University of Richmond.
Today,
the 21-foot (6-meter) bronze equestrian sculpture that shows the
general in military attire sits atop a 40-foot (12-meter) pedestal on
whose side is featured a single word: “Lee.”
Northam
emphasized the monument’s enormous size in his remarks Thursday, saying
that at six stories tall, it towers over homes, businesses and
“everyone who lives in Virginia.”
“And when it’s
the biggest thing around, it sends a clear message: ‘This is what we
value the most.’ But that’s just not true anymore,” he said.
Joseph
Rogers, a descendant of enslaved people and an organizer with the
Defenders who spoke with AP this week from a rally at the Lee monument,
said he felt he was witnessing history when he learned the statue would
be removed.
He also said the moment felt like “a
fulfillment of prophecy,” a reference to words written by the black
editor of the Richmond Planet newspaper who covered the unveiling of the
Lee memorial.
“(The black man) put up the Lee Monument, and should the time come, will be there to take it down,” John Mitchell Jr. wrote.
Elsewhere
on the broad avenue are statues to Confederate President Jefferson
Davis, generals J.E.B. Stuart and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and
Confederate naval officer Matthew Maury.
Richmond
Mayor Levar Stoney announced this week that he and a city councilman
would introduce an ordinance removing the statues, and the Richmond
Times-Dispatch has reported the city council has unanimously affirmed
support for such a move.
Dr. Fergie Reid, who grew
up in segregated Richmond and in 1967 became the first African American
elected to the Virginia General Assembly since Reconstruction, called
the monuments’ removal “long overdue.” But Reid, 95, said he thinks they
still have historical value.
“I think they should go to a museum – just like the dinosaurs,” he said.
