Richmond removes final Confederate statue
Richmond removed its statue of A.P. Hill on December 12—the last of the Confederate monuments owned by the city to come down.
Just before 10am, a crane lifted the bronze statue, located in the middle of a busy intersection, off its pedestal and onto a flatbed truck. The monument was then taken to an undisclosed location for storage.
Several dozen people, both those in support of and against the removal, came out to watch the statue come down. Some of Hill’s indirect descendants were among those in the crowd.
Over the last two years, Richmond—the capital of the Confederacy from May 1861 to April 1865—has removed its Confederate statues, which many saw as symbols of slavery and white supremacy, amidst local and nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism. However, some Confederate tributes on state land, including Capitol Square, remain standing in Richmond.
“They are symbols of white supremacy, so I’m glad they’re being removed,” Richmond resident Pop Holmes told NBC12. “It should be in a museum, not out here where people can feel oppressed, people can feel less-than.”
Legal battles delayed the removal of the Hill monument—the general’s remains were buried in a vault beneath the pedestal. Indirect descendants of Hill argued that only they had the right to move the statue and remains, claiming the site was a public cemetery and not a war memorial. But in October, a judge ruled that Richmond could relocate the statue to a museum, and Hill’s remains to a local cemetery.
On December 12, crews began disassembling the pedestal and digging into the vault, but could not find the remains before day’s end, reports AP.
The following morning, crews located the remains. They began removing them around noon, as arguments ensued in the crowd. Police—some decked out in full military gear, holding rifles—separated people involved in heated disputes.
According to NBC12, attendee Devin Curtis questioned one of the many people in the crowd wearing Confederate flag jackets.
“I just asked him a simple question. I asked him, ‘What does that flag represent to you?’ because to my people, it represents a lot of hate and brutality, and pain,” Curtis told NBC12. “Some people couldn’t take it. They didn’t like the fact that I started speaking facts, and they approached me in a more aggressive way.”
John Hill, who claims to be Hill’s closest living indirect descendant, yelled at the arguing crowd.
“I was exhuming my ancestor’s remains. And they wouldn’t stop screaming the entire time. It was a very personal moment removing his remains, and they were completely out of hand,” he told NBC12.
After about an hour, the arguments calmed down.
A funeral home transferred Hill’s remains to a Culpeper cemetery, near where the general was born. Meanwhile, the city plans to donate the statue to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, which now owns the city’s removed Confederate monuments.
Descendants of Hill continue to push in court for the statue to be relocated to the cemetery where Hill will be reburied.
In brief
Mask up
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School lockdown
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