An imposing statue of Confederate General Robert E.
RICHMOND, Va. – An imposing statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, will be lowered Wednesday, more than 130 years after it was built as a tribute to a Civil War hero who is now widely seen as a symbol of racial injustice. state officials said Monday.
“Virginia’s largest monument to the Confederate insurgency will fall this week,” Governor Ralph Northam said Monday in a press release. “This is an important step in showing who we are and what we value as a commonwealth.”
Lee’s imposing 6.4-foot-tall bronze likeness on a horse sits on a granite pedestal nearly twice the grassy center of a roundabout on Richmond’s famous Monument Avenue.
Gov. Ralph Northam announced plans to demolish the statue in June 2020, ten days after George Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, sparking nationwide protests against police brutality and racism. . Plans were stalled for more than a year by two lawsuits filed by residents who opposed its withdrawal, but Virginia Supreme Court rulings last week paved the way for the statue to be torn down.
In Monday’s press release, state officials said preparations for the statue’s removal will begin Tuesday at 6 p.m., when crews will install fencing.
Once the statue is raised from the pedestal, it is expected to be cut into two pieces for transportation, though the final plan is subject to change, said Dena Potter, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of General Services.
After removing the statue on Wednesday, teams will remove the plaques from the base of the monument on Thursday and replace a weather capsule believed to be there.
In Richmond, a city that was the capital of the Confederacy for much of the Civil War, the statue of Lee became the epicenter of last summer’s protest movement. Since Floyd’s death, the city has removed more than a dozen pieces of Confederate statuary from the city’s land.
As it is one of the largest and most recognized Confederate statues in the country, the removal of Lee’s statute is expected to attract large crowds.
There will be limited viewing opportunities on a first-come, first-served basis, according to state officials in Monday’s press release. The withdrawal will also be streamed live via the governor’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, both under the control of @governorVA.
The statue of Lee was created by internationally renowned French sculptor Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercie and is considered a “masterpiece,” according to its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, where it has been listed since 2007.
When the statue arrived in 1890 from France, it is estimated that 10,000 Virginians used wagons to transport their pieces more than a mile to where it is today. White residents celebrated the statue, but many black residents have long seen 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 pedestal as a symbol of the protest movement that erupted after Floyd’s assassination.
Lawrence West, 38, a member of BLM RVA, an activist group that has been occupying the transformed space at the Lee Monument, said he believes the decision to remove the statue was fueled by the work of protesters.
“I mean, I hadn’t come down before. They (the Democrats at the head of the state government) had every opportunity in the world.
West said he would like the statue site to become a community space “to cultivate all kinds of connections between different people.”