Topline
Virginia officials plan to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee that has towered 60 feet above the state capital of Richmond for over a century on Wednesday, ending months of legal acrimony, the latest Confederate monument to face removal.
People gather around at the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia on June 4, ... [+]
Key Facts
Crews will remove the 21-foot-tall bronze statue of Lee on horseback from its pedestal in Richmond on Wednesday, and store it in a state-owned facility “until a decision is made as to its disposition,” state officials said in a statement Monday.
The statue’s 40-foot granite pedestal will remain onsite, in the middle of a grassy rotary on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, but crews will remove plaques affixed to its base.
Crucial Quote
“This is an important step in showing who we are and what we value as a commonwealth,” Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said in a statement.
Key Background
The Lee statue was placed in Richmond — which served as the Confederacy’s capital city — in 1890, preceding a nationwide surge of Confederate monument-building in the early 20th century, especially in states gripped by overt racial segregation. Locals have called for the statue’s removal for years, and Northam pushed to take down the monument in June 2020, amid a wave of racial justice protests prompted by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Northam was hit by a pair of lawsuits from plaintiffs who argued a property deed and state law from the 19th century barred the governor from removing the statue, but the state Supreme Court affirmed Northam’s power to take down the monument last week, allowing him to move forward with the removal.
Tangent
State and local governments have pushed for years to remove Confederate statues, which many critics have castigated as celebrations of white supremacy. This process sped up last year. Charleston removed a statue of pro-slavery South Carolina Sen. John C. Calhoun in June 2020, Richmond removed statues of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson and several of his contemporaries last summer, and Tennessee removed a bust of Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from its state capitol six weeks ago. Plus, Charlottesville, Virginia, removed statues of Lee and Jackson in mid-July, four years after an initial proposal to take down the Lee statue fueled a violent white nationalist rally in the city.
I am a breaking news reporter at Forbes. I previously covered local news for the Boston Guardian, and I graduated from Tufts University in 2019. You can contact me at
…I am a breaking news reporter at Forbes. I previously covered local news for the Boston Guardian, and I graduated from Tufts University in 2019. You can contact me at jwalsh@forbes.com.