It’s been more than a year since statues began coming down in Charlottesville—where are they now?
Johnny Reb
In August 2020, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to take down Charlottesville’s first Confederate monument: a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier known as “Johnny Reb,” who stood outside the county courthouse for 111 years. That fall, the board decided to send the mass-produced “At Ready” statue to the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, which planned to erect Johnny Reb, along with his two cannons and pile of cannonballs, on the Third Winchester Battlefield. The New Market-based organization has publicly opposed the removal of Civil War monuments, and installed its own new Confederate memorial in 2019.
Nearly two years later, the cannons now mark a battlefield artillery position—but the statue and cannonballs have yet to be put on public display.
“[The statue] will be re-erected in the coming months at its new permanent location,” SVBF CEO Keven Walker told C-VILLE in an email. “The final location for a monument that will utilize the stacked cannonball casting is being considered.”
According to the group’s proposal, the statue—re-dedicated as The Virginia Monument—will “mark the location where Virginia Troops fought and died for Virginia on that particular field,” while the cannonballs will “be used as a bronze element for a new stone monument [marking] the location where artillery played a decisive role in the outcome of the fighting.” A marker will also be installed near the rebel soldier, “relating the history of the monument itself and recognizing its significance and detailing its journey to the battlefield.”
Robert E. Lee
Five months after moving crews hauled off the infamous Robert E. Lee monument to a city storage facility in July, Charlottesville City Council donated the bronze statue to the Jefferson School African American Center, which plans to melt it down and use the bronze to create a new public artwork—but the project, called Swords Into Plowshares, could be brought to a halt. At a hearing in Charlottesville Circuit Court last week, Judge Paul M. Peatross ruled that a lawsuit filed against the City of Charlottesville and the Jefferson School by two organizations that bid on the statue—the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation—could proceed.
Peatross sustained the plaintiffs’ claim that the city does not have the authority to melt down the Lee statue due to a state code section forbidding localities from destroying war memorials. Last year, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the law did not apply to statues erected before 1997, but the code has since been amended to apply to all war memorials—regardless of when they were erected. Peatross also sustained two of the plaintiffs’ other claims: that the city violated the Freedom of Information Act during a December meeting regarding the awarding of the statue, and that the bidding process fell under the Virginia Procurement Act, allowing the plaintiffs to seek legal relief.
If they win the case, the plaintiffs—represented by the same attorneys as the Monument Fund, which sued the city for trying to remove the Lee and Jackson statues in 2017—want the Jefferson School to return the statue to the city, and for the bidding process to be redone, with the school barred from participating. A trial date has yet to be announced.
“We’ll continue the process of community engagement,” said Jefferson School Executive Director Andrea Douglas of Swords Into Plowshares in an email to C-VILLE. “We hope that people will participate in this step as it is as important as the outcome of the case to our goals.”
Stonewall Jackson
Unlike Lee, Charlottesville’s statue of Stonewall Jackson has been kicked out of the city and shipped to the other side of the country. In December, City Council voted to sell the bronze monument to LAXART, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit arts organization that plans to use it for a new exhibit titled MONUMENTS, featuring decommissioned Confederate statues paired with contemporary art pieces inspired by the historic relics.
According to LAXART’s proposal, the Jackson statue will be “the centerpiece” of the innovative exhibit, which is expected to open at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art next year.
Renowned Black artists including Ja’Tovia Gary, Torkwase Dyson, and Abigail Deville are slated to create contemporary artwork. Additionally, MONUMENTS will include public programming and educational materials, providing broader context.
In December, LAXART director Hamza Walker told the Baltimore Fishbowl that he was currently in discussions with six or seven municipalities, two colleges, a museum, and one family about borrowing Confederate monuments, and that he hoped to obtain around 16 statues in total. However, Walker has since faced some roadblocks—in December, the city of Baltimore declined to lend four monuments to the exhibit, and in January, the City Council of Charleston, South Carolina, held off on voting on Walker’s request due to a lawsuit.
Sacajawea, Lewis, and Clark
After City Council made a last-minute decision to remove the city’s statue of Sacajawea, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark along with the Lee and Jackson monuments, the statue was immediately sent to the Lewis & Clark Exploratory Center in Darden Towe Park, which committed to working with Indigenous peoples to create a new exhibit properly contextualizing the statue.
Since then, the statue that depicts the Lemhi Shoshone interpreter in what many perceive as an offensive, cowering position has remained in limbo, sitting in storage at the center. In December, council held a meeting to vote on the center’s bid on the statue, but Executive Director Alexandria Searls requested the councilors hold off. Sacajawea’s descendants had made an amendment requesting permanent control over the statue, which Searls was unsure the center could legally grant and needed to be approved by its board of directors. No one had told the descendants they could not make last-minute changes to the legal document, explains Searls.
Later, Searls learned that the process of transferring the statue to the center had been done incorrectly, due to “a complete breakdown in communication.” Searls says she was told last year that the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors had agreed that the center—which is on land owned by the city and county—could take ownership of the statue, but a few weeks after council’s December meeting, the county’s legal counsel told her the board never took a formal vote.
The county now wants the center to set aside money for the potential removal of the statue from the park, in case it shuts down one day. Because she does not feel comfortable raising more money until the exhibit is officially approved—the center already has $70,000 in commitments from donors—Searls is currently looking into bonds and is waiting for the county to tell her its stipulations.
“The situation is now in the Board of Supervisors’ hands,” says Searls. “[It needs] to be solved in 2022 or else the money is not going to be ours.”
“No decisions have been made by, nor any proposals from the Board of Supervisors in relation to the Lewis, Clark, and Sacajawea Statue,” Albemarle Supervisor Donna Price told C-VILLE in an email. “I am also not aware of any particular timeline for this matter.”
George Rogers Clark
Just one day after Charlottesville took down its racist monuments, the University of Virginia removed its George Rogers Clark statue, depicting Clark on horseback attacking unarmed Native Americans, with three white frontiersmen holding guns behind him. Clark, who was born in Albemarle County in 1752, perpetuated genocide against Indigenous peoples and stole their land during and after the Revolutionary War.
Beginning in September, a university committee—co-chaired by a citizen of the Monacan Nation and a UVA faculty member—consulted with representatives from 13 Native American tribes about the future of the statue, which remains in an undisclosed storage facility.
“The University and the tribes discussed options to remake the park space where it once sat,” UVA spokesman Brian Coy told C-VILLE in an email. “UVA plans to engage a landscape architect with Indigenous landscape expertise for a proposal for the park redesign.”
In a report of recommendations for UVA President Jim Ryan, Virginian tribal leaders also urged the university to establish a formal tribal consultation policy; appoint tribal liaisons; dedicate an admissions office position for Native American recruitment and outreach; increase its Native American student and faculty population; give tuition waivers to citizens of Virginia tribes; develop a Native American law program and legal aid clinic; and offer a class on Virginian tribal history to all students and faculty.
The other monuments
The Confederate monuments in downtown Charlottesville and next to the Albemarle County courthouse have been the subject of controversy, litigation, and, of course, removal. In some neighboring counties, Confederate monuments still stand in front of the courthouses.
Source: The Historical Marker Database and the Southern Poverty Law Center
By PlannerGuy/Wikipedia
Orange County
“They fought for the right. They died for their country. Cherish their memory. Imitate their example,” reads the Confederate monument in front of the Orange County courthouse. Controversy over the monument swelled in late March, according to the Culpeper Star-Exponent, when Orange County Circuit Court Judge David B. Franzén called the statue “an obstruction to the proper administration of justice in Orange County,” in an email to Orange County leaders. That message prompted a fundraising email from Virginia State Senator Bryce Reeves, who joined a protest in support of the monument and called for Franzen to step down.
Nelson County
Erected in 1965 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the memorial stands near the courthouse in downtown Lovingston. Its inscription reads “In memory of the heroic Confederate Soldiers of Nelson County who served in the War Between the States, 1861-1865. Love makes memory eternal.”
Fluvanna County
Dedicated in 1901 “To the memory of the Confederate soldiers of Fluvanna County 1861-1865,” the memorial is on courthouse grounds in Palmyra.
Louisa County
Four years after the Confederate monument was dedicated in Palmyra, Louisa County dedicated its own monument “in memory of the courage, patriotism and devotion of the Confederate soldiers of Louisa County, 1861-1865.”