Confederate hero General Lee’s statue in Virginia to be removed

The US state of Virginia is set to remove a statue of
Confederate General Robert E Lee in Richmond on Wednesday, a move lauded by
many but seen by some as a reaction against the graffiti on the controversial
monument.

The statue was erected more than 130 years ago as a tribute
to a Civil War hero who is now widely seen as a symbol of racial injustice.

“Virginia’s largest monument to the Confederate insurrection
will come down this week. This is an important step in showing who we are and
what we value as a commonwealth,” Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said in
a statement quoted by the Associated Press.

Northam announced plans to take down the 21-foot (6.4-meter)
tall bronze statue in June 2020, 10 days after George Floyd died under the knee
of a Minneapolis police officer, sparking nationwide protests against police
brutality and racism. The removal was shelved for more than a year due to two
lawsuits filed by residents who opposed the removal, but the Supreme Court of
Virginia cleared the way for the statue to be taken down.

Plaques from the base of the monument will be removed on
Thursday after the statue is taken down on Wednesday.

Some racial justice advocates see the graffiti-covered
pedestal not as a monument of slavery but as a symbol of the protest movement
that erupted after Floyd’s killing.

Lawrence West, a member of the activist group BLM RVA, said
that he believes the decision to remove the statue was fueled by the work of
protesters.

“I mean, it had not come down before. They (Democrats
in charge of state government) had all the opportunities in the world,”
the 38-year old activist said, according to the Associated Press.

In Richmond, a city that was the capital of the Confederacy
for much of the Civil War, the Lee statue became the epicenter of last summer’s
protest movement. The city has removed more than a dozen other pieces of
Confederate statuary on city land since Floyd’s death.

The Lee statue was created by the internationally renowned
French sculptor Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercie and is considered a
“masterpiece,” according to its nomination to the National Register
of Historic Places, where it has been listed since 2007.

When the statue arrived in 1890 from France, an estimated
10,000 Virginians used wagons to haul its pieces more than a mile to where it
now stands. White residents celebrated the statue, but many Black residents
have long seen it as a monument glorifying slavery.