Chalk up another loss for General Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy.
The statue at the heart of the deadly 2017 Charlottesville, Va., clash between white supremacists and counterprotesters is slated to ride into the sunset this weekend when officials take it off its pedestal and place it into storage. A nearby monument honoring seditionist Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson will also be removed Saturday from its perch in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where it, along with the outgoing Lee statue, were erected nearly a century ago.
Charlottesville became a flash point for the resurgence of the modern day white supremacy movement nearly four years ago when civil rights demonstrator Heather Heyer was fatally rundown by a neo-Nazi sympathizer at a Unite the Right rally. That gathering took place in defense of Confederate monuments and ideals.
Then-President Donald Trump, a defender of Confederate monuments, further stoked division by claiming that while there were “rough, bad people” at the infamous Aug. 12 rally, there were also “very fine people on both sides” of the violent gathering.
“I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general,” Trump stated at the time.
The Lee and Jackson markers were crafted more than a half-century after the end of the Civil War, at the height of the Jim Crow Era, which aimed to further marginalize Black Americans. Though Lee died in 1870 and Jackson in 1863, their legacy lives on. A Rebel flag was paraded through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, when Trump loyalists violently attempted to stop the certification of the 2020 election that removed the 75-year-old conservative leader from office.
Preparations to remove the controversial sculptures in Virginia began Friday with fencing and designated viewing areas being established in the vicinity. The Charlottesville City Council voted in favor of the monuments’ removal in February 2017, but only now have lawmakers and administrators cleared the way to make that a reality. The statues’ next home has not yet been determined.
With News Wire Services
