Crews remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue, September 8, 2021 in Richmond, Virginia.(Steve Helber - Pool/Getty Images)
Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.The towering statue of Robert E. Lee, the man who led military forces to try and overthrow the U.S. government over the abolition of slavery, no longer stands in the capital of Virginia.
The 12-ton statue was removed from its pedestal in Richmond Wednesday morning, some 130 years after it was first erected. The statue is the last Confederate symbol that stood in the city the illegitimate nation called its capital during the height of the U.S. Civil War.
The statue is being removed after a more than yearlong legal battle. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s decision to remove it was opposed by state residents who argued the governor had no right to tear down monuments as he saw fit. His opposition cited an 1889 joint resolution by the state’s General Assembly stating that a governor was prohibited from directly ordering the removal of a state monument. The pro-Confederate statue group also argued that an 1890 deed showed that Virginia agreed to protect the statue after the family that once owned the land transferred it to the state.
Ultimately, both the Virginia Supreme Court and earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court, agreed that both the joint resolution and the 1890 deed held no merit.
“After 133 years, the statue of Robert E. Lee has finally come down—the last Confederate statue on Monument Avenue, and the largest in the South,” Northam, a Democrat, said in a statement shortly after the statue was lifted off of its base and loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck.
“The public monuments reflect the story we choose to tell about who we are as a people. It is time to display history as history, and use the public memorials to honor the full and inclusive truth of who we are today and in the future.”
In the last three years, several Southern states have wrestled with whether they should tear down monuments to the Confederacy. As early as 2017, following the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, cities including Memphis and Dallas successfully removed Confederate statues from local parks.
But after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, calls to remove these monuments commemorating figures who fought to maintain enslavement and unfair treatment of Black people were reignited. Local municipalities like the mayor of Richmond, Virginia, moved to have the sculptures using government powers. In other cities, as protestors took to the streets to decry police violence against Black people, demonstrators removed the statues by force.
At least 168 Confederate statues were removed in 2020, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The fate of many statues, once they’re removed from their pedestals, remains up to local governments. In some cases, the decades-old effigies are sold to private, often wealthy citizens. Sometimes, they are repurposed into educational exhibits. Other times they are destroyed outright.
As for what will happen to Richmond’s Lee statue, Northam’s office said it will be stored in a storage facility until the state figures out a more appropriate place for it. Meanwhile, the statue’s pedestal will become the site for a new, handmade time capsule, the governor’s office announced Wednesday. The time capsule will replace a time capsule that was buried at the statue’s cornerstone in 1887.
“This monument and its time capsule reflected Virginia in 1890—and it’s time to remove both, so that our public spaces better reflect who we are as a people in 2021,” Northam said in a statement Monday.
The 12-ton statue was removed from its pedestal in Richmond Wednesday morning, some 130 years after it was first erected. The statue is the last Confederate symbol that stood in the city the illegitimate nation called its capital during the height of the U.S. Civil War.
The statue is being removed after a more than yearlong legal battle. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s decision to remove it was opposed by state residents who argued the governor had no right to tear down monuments as he saw fit. His opposition cited an 1889 joint resolution by the state’s General Assembly stating that a governor was prohibited from directly ordering the removal of a state monument. The pro-Confederate statue group also argued that an 1890 deed showed that Virginia agreed to protect the statue after the family that once owned the land transferred it to the state.
Ultimately, both the Virginia Supreme Court and earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court, agreed that both the joint resolution and the 1890 deed held no merit.
“After 133 years, the statue of Robert E. Lee has finally come down—the last Confederate statue on Monument Avenue, and the largest in the South,” Northam, a Democrat, said in a statement shortly after the statue was lifted off of its base and loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck.
“The public monuments reflect the story we choose to tell about who we are as a people. It is time to display history as history, and use the public memorials to honor the full and inclusive truth of who we are today and in the future.”
In the last three years, several Southern states have wrestled with whether they should tear down monuments to the Confederacy. As early as 2017, following the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, cities including Memphis and Dallas successfully removed Confederate statues from local parks.
But after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, calls to remove these monuments commemorating figures who fought to maintain enslavement and unfair treatment of Black people were reignited. Local municipalities like the mayor of Richmond, Virginia, moved to have the sculptures using government powers. In other cities, as protestors took to the streets to decry police violence against Black people, demonstrators removed the statues by force.
At least 168 Confederate statues were removed in 2020, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The fate of many statues, once they’re removed from their pedestals, remains up to local governments. In some cases, the decades-old effigies are sold to private, often wealthy citizens. Sometimes, they are repurposed into educational exhibits. Other times they are destroyed outright.
As for what will happen to Richmond’s Lee statue, Northam’s office said it will be stored in a storage facility until the state figures out a more appropriate place for it. Meanwhile, the statue’s pedestal will become the site for a new, handmade time capsule, the governor’s office announced Wednesday. The time capsule will replace a time capsule that was buried at the statue’s cornerstone in 1887.
“This monument and its time capsule reflected Virginia in 1890—and it’s time to remove both, so that our public spaces better reflect who we are as a people in 2021,” Northam said in a statement Monday.