Coleman, executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation and the former president and chief operating officer of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, said she saw Wednesday’s removal as a historical moment in the city’s long-running struggle with how to tell its history. Northam, who after a 2019 scandal involving a racist photo in his medical school yearbook pledged to spend the rest of his term addressing Virginia’s racial inequalities, has tapped the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to lead a community-driven redesign for the whole avenue.Ĭhristy S. The changes to Monument Avenue have remade the prestigious boulevard, which is lined with mansions and tony apartments and is partly preserved as a National Historic Landmark district. “I physically felt in the air hope, if that makes sense, because I saw multigenerational, multiracial people chanting to take it down and demanding change,” said McClellan, who is Black. The pedestal has been covered by constantly evolving, colorful graffiti, with many of the hand-painted messages denouncing police and demanding an end to systemic racism and inequality. Jennifer McClellan, who represents Richmond and lives in the neighborhood, said the idea of the removal had long felt “impossible,” though that began to shift after Floyd’s murder, when the area around the statute became a hub for the growing protest movement and saw occasional clashes between police and demonstrators. hopefully some of the ancestors feel vindicated,” said McQuinn, who is Black and has been an outspoken advocate for a better telling of Richmond’s Black history in public spaces. Seeing Lee come down Wednesday was “surreal,” she said. Delores McQuinn, a Democrat whose district includes Richmond and who sponsored the 2020 war memorial legislation, said she used to avoid driving on Monument Avenue because she found the statues so offensive. That law was amended by the new Democratic majority at the Statehouse and signed by Northam, allowing localities to decide the monuments’ fate as of July 1, 2020.ĭel. But at the time, local governments in Virginia were hamstrung by a state law protecting memorials to war veterans. As recently as several years ago, key government officials argued for keeping it in place.Īfter a rally of white supremacists in the city of Charlottesville erupted into violence in 2017, other Confederate monuments started falling around the country. They argued that taking the statues down would amount to erasing a key part of the commonwealth’s history. Those who opposed the statue’s removal often noted its artistic significance and Virginia’s centrality to the Civil War. The work proceeded under a heavy police presence, with streets closed for blocks around the area, but no arrests were reported, and no counter protesters emerged. The pedestal is to remain for now, although workers are expected to remove a time capsule from the structure on Thursday. They were hauled away on a flatbed truck to cheers from the remaining crowd and claps of thunder from a midday storm. But litigation tied up his plans until the state Supreme Court cleared the way last week. Ralph Northam ordered the statue’s removal last summer amid the nationwide protest movement that erupted after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. “It’s representative of the fact that we’re sort of peeling back the layers of injustice that Black people and people of color have experienced when governed by white supremacist policies for so long.”ĭemocratic Gov. “It’s very difficult to imagine, certainly, even two years ago that the statues on Monument Avenue would actually be removed,” said Ana Edwards, a community activist and founding member of the Virginia Defenders for Freedom Justice & Equality. The removal marked a major victory for civil rights activists, whose previous calls to dismantle the statues had been steadfastly rebuked by city and state officials alike. Hundreds of onlookers erupted in cheers and song as the 21-foot-tall bronze figure was lifted off a pedestal and lowered to the ground. Lee that towered over Richmond for generations was taken down, cut into pieces and hauled away Wednesday, as the former capital of the Confederacy erased the last of the Civil War figures that once defined its most prominent thoroughfare.
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