A controversial giant statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia is set to be removed on Wednesday, more than 130 years after it was erected as a tribute to the Civil War hero. According to State officials, on Monday they said the statue has to come down because it has now been widely used as a symbol of racial injustice.
“Virginia’s largest memorial to the Confederate rebellion will come down this week,” Governor Ralph Northam said in a news release Monday. “It’s an important step in showing who we are and what we value as a Commonwealth.”
Lee’s 6.4-meter-tall bronze likeness on a horse sits atop a granite pedestal nearly twice as long in the grassy center of a traffic circle on Richmond’s famed Monument Avenue.
Ralph Northam announced plans to take down the statue in June 2020, 10 days after George Floyd died below the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, sparking nationwide protests against police brutality and racism. The plans were put on hold for more than a year by two lawsuits filed by residents opposing its removal, but decisions by Virginia’s Supreme Court last week cleared the way for the statue to be taken down.
In Monday’s release, state officials said preparations to remove the statue would begin at 6 p.m. Tuesday when crews put up protective fencing.
According to Reuters, after taking down the statue on Wednesday, the crew will remove the plaque from the base of the monument on Thursday and replace a time capsule that is believed to be there.
In Richmond, a city that was the Union capital for most of the Civil War, Lee’s statue became the focus of last summer’s protest movement. The city has removed more than a dozen Confederate statues on city land since Floyd’s death.
As one of the largest and most recognizable Confederate statues in the country, the removal of the Lee statue is expected to draw large crowds.
State officials said in a Monday release that limited viewing opportunities will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. The evictions will also be live-streamed through the governor’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, both of which have the handle @governorVA.
The statue of Lee was created by the internationally renowned French sculptor Marius-Jean-Antonin Merci and is considered a “masterpiece” according to the nomination of the National Register of Historic Places, where it has been listed since 2007.
When the statue arrived from France in 1890, an estimated 10,000 Virginians used wagons to carry the pieces more than a mile from where it now stands. White residents celebrate the statue, but many black residents have long viewed it as a monument glorifying slavery.
The Northam administration has said it will seek public input on the future of the statue. The 40-foot granite pedestal will be left behind for now amid efforts to rethink the design of Monument Avenue. Some racial justice advocates do not want to remove it, seeing the graffiti-covered posture as a symbol of the protest movement that erupted after Floyd’s killing.
Lawrence West, 38, a member of the BLM RVA, an active group occupying the converted space at the Lee memorial, said he believed the decision to remove the statue was inspired by the work of protesters.
“I mean, it didn’t come down before. They (the Democrats in charge of the state government) had all the opportunities in the world.”
West said he would like to see the statue site turn into a community space “to develop all kinds of relationships between different people.”
