After years of legal battles, the Swords into Plowshare project has melted down the statue of Robert E. Lee, which once stood in a park near Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. Opposition to the monument’s initial removal fueled the deadly violence of the 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally. Now, the bronze which once formed the likeness of a Confederate general will be used to make a new piece of public art, set to be on display in Charlottesville by 2027.
The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center’s proposal to repurpose the statue’s bronze, under the project name Swords into Plowshares, was selected by City Council in 2021. But the project’s proponents have spent the last two years battling it out in the Charlottesville Circuit Court with two other groups that unsuccessfully bid to acquire the Lee statue. After the last remaining legal challenge to the Swords into Plowshares project was dropped this summer, the Jefferson School was finally able to crank up the heat on Lee on October 21 of this year.
Traveling with the disassembled statue in secret, Swords into Plowshares melted down the Lee Statue at an undisclosed foundry in the South.
The project team purportedly plans to transform what was previously considered by some to be a symbol of hatred into artwork that embodies Charlottesville’s values of “inclusivity and racial justice.”
For more on the melting down of the monument and the Swords into Plowshares project, check out the November 1 edition of C-VILLE Weekly.