Virginia removes Robert E. Lee statue from state capital

After greater than a yr of authorized wrangling, one of many nation’s largest Confederate monuments — a hovering statue of Robert E. Lee, the South’s Civil War basic — was hoisted off its pedestal in downtown Richmond on Wednesday morning.
At 8:45 a.m., a person in an orange jacket waved his arms, and the 21-foot statue rose into the air and glided, slowly, to a flatbed truck beneath. The solar had simply come out and illuminated the towering grey pedestal as a small crowd on the east aspect of the monument let loose a cheer.
“As a native of Richmond, I want to say that the head of the snake has been removed,” stated Gary Flowers, a radio present host and civil rights activist, who’s Black and was watching the exercise. He stated he deliberate to rejoice Wednesday night time and would inform footage of his lifeless family members that “the humiliation and agony and pain you suffered has been partly lifted.”
It was an emotional second. The Lee statue was erected in 1890, the primary of six Confederate monuments — symbols of white energy that dotted the primary boulevard in Richmond, the previous capital of the Confederacy. On Wednesday, it grew to become the final of them to be eliminated, opening up the story of this metropolis to all of its residents to write down.
“This city belongs to all of us, not just some of us,” stated David Bailey, who’s Black and whose nonprofit group, Arrabon, helps church buildings with racial reconciliation work. “Now we can try to figure out what’s next. We are creating a new legacy.”
The nation has periodically wrestled with monuments to its Confederate previous, together with in 2017, after a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, touched off efforts to tear them down — and to place them up. Richmond, too, eliminated some after the homicide of George Floyd final yr, in a sudden operation that took many abruptly. But the statue of Lee endured, largely due to its difficult authorized standing. That was clarified final week by the Supreme Court of Virginia. On Monday, Gov. Ralph Northam, who had referred to as for its removing final yr, introduced he would lastly do it.
Its removing marked the top of the period of Confederate monuments within the metropolis that’s maybe finest identified for them. Monument Avenue, the grassy boulevard the place lots of them stood, was a proud function of town’s structure and a coveted deal with. But in recent times, as town grew to become extra various, demographically and politically, extra of its residents started to query the memorials. Now, because the final statue is taken down, many individuals interviewed on this as soon as conservative Southern metropolis stated that they won’t have agreed in previous years, however that now their removing felt proper.
Security obstacles are positioned across the statue of Robert E. Lee, seen within the background, in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday night, Sept. 7, 2021, in preparation for its removing on Wednesday morning. (The New York Times)
“I’ve evolved,” stated Irv Cantor, a average Democrat in Richmond, who’s white and whose home is on Monument Avenue. “I was naïvely thinking that we could keep these statues and just add new ones to show the true history and everything would be fine.”
But he stated the previous few years of momentous occasions involving race, from the election of the primary Black president, to the violence in Charlottesville in 2017, to the killing of Floyd final summer season and the protests that adopted, confirmed him that the monuments had been basically in battle with equity in America.
“Now I understand the resentment that folks have toward these monuments,” stated Cantor, 68. “I don’t think they can exist anymore.”
Come down the statues did, and in Richmond on Wednesday, a small however regular stream of residents got here to observe that historical past occur.
Sarah Pena, 32, a medical scholar, was standing along with her canine Walter. She stated her mother and father had been immigrants from Brazil and although she was born in Richmond she had by no means actually understood what the monuments meant.
“I just thought it was a statue — I truly thought it was just a statue,” she stated. “I didn’t know.”
But final yr, Floyd’s killing, and the protests that adopted, jolted her into consciousness. And immediately she had taken the morning off to have the ability to watch the statue come down.
“It’s history, and I want to see it,” she stated.
The battle over Civil War reminiscence is as outdated because the battle itself. At its root, it’s a energy battle over who has the suitable to determine how historical past is remembered. It is painful as a result of it entails essentially the most traumatic occasion the nation has ever skilled, and one that’s nonetheless, to some extent, unprocessed, largely as a result of the South got here up with its personal model of the battle — that it was a noble battle for states’ rights, not slavery.
The violent rally in Charlottesville and the homicide of Floyd ignited the latest public dialog. And in some methods, the needle appeared to maneuver: Across the nation final yr, Confederate statues had been both torn down by protesters or eliminated by the federal government. Americans surged by cities and cities, demanding racial justice and a extra truthful model of historical past. But resistance got here too and most just lately has taken the type of a sprawling debate over vital race idea, which argues that historic patterns of racism are ingrained in regulation and different fashionable establishments, and what model of America’s story is instructed.
Perhaps no metropolis higher represents America’s messy second on race than Richmond. It is marked by profound racial inequalities, the results of generations of discrimination, through which Black residents’ votes had been diluted and Black householders couldn’t get loans. But a long time of reconciliation work going again to the Nineteen Nineties made town extra receptive than many within the South to eradicating its Confederate monuments, those that did the work argued.
“Richmond has come a long way,” stated the Rev. Sylvester Turner, pastor at Pilgrim Baptist Church within the Richmond neighborhood of East View, who has labored on racial reconciliation within the metropolis for 30 years. “We’ve begun to peel back the scabs. When you do that, you experience a lot of pain and a lot of pushback, and I think we are in that place. We are dealing with a lot of the unhealed wounds that are beneath the surface.”
Even so, the monuments had been on the coronary heart of Richmond’s id and had been backed by highly effective residents, and the truth that they got here down appeared to shock nearly all people.
“If you would have told me that the monuments were going to go down, I would have thought somebody would blow up Richmond first before anyone would have let that happen,” Bailey stated. “I think it’s a modern-day miracle.”

What is left is a metropolis plagued by empty pedestals, a sort of image of America’s unfinished enterprise of race that’s notably attribute of Richmond. That panorama — and the political upheaval that has include it — has introduced a backlash too.
Corey Widmer, pastor at Third Church, a largely white, largely conservative church in Richmond, stated he has labored onerous to know his congregants and assist them settle for how a lot the nation has moved on race. They have learn books, held Zoom periods and debated what was taking place. Some congregants modified. Others left the church.
“There’s so much fear and so much political polarization,” stated Widmer, who’s white. He stated each pastor making an attempt to assist white Christians see the attitude of Black Americans and “reckon with our own responsibility has really been grieved by the conflict and pain that it has caused.”
He added: “And yet this is how we change. Face it head on. Work through it. Love each other. Try to stay at the table. And just keep working. I don’t know what else to do.”