On Monday night, Charlottesville City Council unanimously voted to remove the statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from the city’s public parks.
“Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Council of the City of Charlottesville, that the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee shall be removed from Market Street Park, and the statue of Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson shall be removed from Court Square Park,” reads the beginning of the official resolution.
The vote marks a major step forward in the years-long battle over the statues’ fate, though the saga is not yet complete. Council hasn’t decided what will become of the statues once they’ve been removed from the parks.
According to a 2020 state law regarding the removal of monuments, the city must now wait 30 days before acting further. It is required to offer the statues “for relocation and placement to any museum, historical society, government, or military battlefield,” but does not have to accept any bids. Beginning in early July, the city “shall have sole authority to determine the final disposition of the monument or memorial.”
Monday’s vote comes more than five years after then-high schooler Zyahna Bryant started a petition to remove the Lee statue and rename Lee Park. A few months later, in February 2017, City Council voted 3-2 to take the statues down. Shortly after that, a collection of Confederate admirers sued the city over that vote, in a case that went all the way to the state Supreme Court. In the summer of 2017, the statues served as a rallying point for white supremacist violence when the deadly Unite the Right rally unfolded in their shadow.
In 2020, the General Assembly passed a new law allowing localities to remove or recontextualize memorials like these statues, and earlier this year, the state Supreme Court ruled on behalf of the city in the original 2017 case, clearing the path for removal.
The new state law requires localities to hold a public hearing before moving forward with removal or recontextualization of monuments. That hearing took place at the end of Monday’s council meeting, and the community turned out in force, delivering more than two hours of public comment, almost all advocating for the removal or destruction of the statues. Many speakers emphasized that simply relocating the monuments to another location would not sufficiently undo the harm the monuments had caused.
“The community has certainly spoken,” said Councilor Heather Hill before the vote. “It was a clear message to this council,”
“I will be very proud to take a vote to remove these, and to reimagine our public spaces in these areas,” said Councilor Michael Payne.
Mayor Nikuyah Walker spoke last, before the council moved on the resolution. “The statues need to go,” she said. “But we also need to remember that the work isn’t complete at that moment…I feel the stories that my grandmothers told me. I feel them so deeply and so strongly. Once these statues are destroyed, there is so much more work to do in our community.”
Giving Voice
More than 50 community members tuned in to Monday night’s virtual City Council meeting to share their opinions on the statues. Out of the dozens of speakers in attendance, just five expressed support for keeping the monuments in place. A selection of comments from the meeting are excerpted below.
Larycia Hawkins: “I am Sally Heming’s ghost, here to haunt City Hall, to remind you that racial and economic progress do not proceed by hiding these ignominious symbols…They deserve to be destroyed, because that’s what reparative justice, and restorative justice, would look like.”
Don Gathers: “There is no gray area on this. There is no middle ground. History will judge what we as a community and you as a council do on this night. It’s past time for those things to come down. Please don’t send this problem somewhere else. Those things are like the bat signal for white supremacists. Have someone transform it into a rainbow arc, in all the beautiful pride colors, and watch white supremacist heads explode.”
Amanda Moxham: “We are tired of performative unity. We are ready for transformative healing. We owe it to our children, and the many generations that are not born yet. We owe them spaces where white supremacy is not the default.”
Miranda Elliot Rader:“When we remove them, the space of their absence will hum with meaning.”
Sarah Kelly: “I’m 80 years old…I remember passing the Lee statue as a child, and being told get to stepping because I was on the wrong side of Charlottesville…I would love to see the horse riding in to a melting pot. They’ve brought nothing but pain to us Black people.”
Walt Heinecke: “These are symbols of hate, pure and simple, and you can’t contextualize hate. How many statues of Hitler are there in Germany that are contextualized?”
Gregory Weaver: “The figures are white supremacists. They were installed by white supremacists…The Lee and Jackson statues must be completely destroyed. We cannot sell them. We cannot allow them to become someone’s perverse trophies.”
Daniel Miller: “I’m a white, ninth-generation Virginian. My family moved to Virginia 35 years before it became a state…Removing these statues isn’t destroying history, it’s making space for a real accounting of our past, by correcting a lie.”
Kathryn Laughon: “Be courageous and visionary in what happens to that statue. Our toxic waste cannot go to another community. We need to think of a way to transform so they cannot ever again be a rallying point for white supremacy.”
Kat Mayberry: “The statue attracts violent, radical extremists from all over the state and all over the country. They come here specifically to the Lee statue, and they come here armed. There is a public safety reason to take these statues down as soon as possible.”
Kori Price: “From an artist’s perspective, the statues don’t offer any artistic value to our city. Not only are these statues symbols and idols of white supremacy, but they are eyesores. They do not belong in Charlottesville’s vibrant arts scene, nor in any part of any community.”
Brad Slocum: “As a survivor of violence in August 2017, I still get a fight or flight response walking by the corner where I was stabbed in the stomach with a flagpole. These statues continue to be a rallying cry for [the far right.]…They need to be melted down.”
DeTeasa Gathers: “As a girl, when I was growing up, approximately 10 years old, I remember walking by that monument with my grandmother…The only thing I can recall is walking by there and her actually saying we don’t go over there. That was History 101…Take them down for the next 10-year-old girl.”
Lashundra Bryson: “I don’t think they can be repurposed. They should be taken away in the night with no announcement or fanfare. It is fitting and poetic justice that they would disappear into the night like countless enslaved African Americans that Lee and Jackson fought to keep enslaved. The statues aren’t needed to remember history. Just ask Black people.”