The U.S. Army will remove a Confederate monument from Arlington National Cemetery this week, officials said.
Work will be completed by Dec. 22, according to military leaders. The teardown of the Confederate Memorial is the final major step in a years-long plan to remove Confederate names and imagery from military sites.
The Confederate Memorial was installed in 1914 in a section of the cemetery dedicated to Confederate soldiers. Atop a 32-foot pedestal stands a “bronze, classical female figure, crowned with olive leaves, [representing] the American South,” as described on the cemetery’s website.
Under the woman, there are several figures. One of them is an enslaved man loyally following his owner to war. Another is a stereotypical “mammy” holding the child of a white military officer.
“The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery,” reads the description on Arlington’s website.
Around 40 Republicans in Congress demanded the Pentagon cease operations to remove the monument. Military leaders said the operation would go ahead.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, also a Republican, said he would happily move it to New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley. However, Army officials told the Washington Post that it would be relocated to an unnamed storage facility.
The Department of Defense has spent the past few years examining the Confederate legacy at its facilities in response to the racial justice protests of 2020. In another high profile move earlier this year, Fort Bragg was renamed Fort Liberty.
Calls to tear down the Confederate Memorial at Arlington predate the police murder of George Floyd. Following far-right demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017, descendants of memorial sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel said they wanted the monument to be removed.
With News Wire Services
