The capital of the Confederacy is bracing for the next fight over Civil War monuments and bronzes of southern generals, with a confederate heritage organization seeking to rally next month at the city’s Robert E. Lee statue.
Robert E. Lee statue on Richmond’s Monument Avenue.
Just a month after Saturday’s deadly clash over Civil War statues in Charlottesville, Va., just 70 miles from Richmond, the group “Americans for Richmond Monument Preservation” has applied for a rally permit for Sept. 16, according to reports.
It has already sparked an online protest to kill the application, but a group associated with the preservation group claims it will go on.
The city, which hosts the “White House of the Confederacy” in the shadow of the state capital, had already plunged into the battle over the statues on its heralded Monument Avenue. While cities such as Charlottesville have decided to move the monuments, Richmond has created a commission which is seeking a middle ground.
But it’s not pleasing either side, with supporters rejecting any effort to add “context” to the statues, and foes calling the Confederate monuments hate.
The U.S. National Park Service has a site dedicated to Monument Avenue and describes the Lee statue this way:
The 1890 unveiling of Jean Antoine Mercie’s great equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee revealed the first major element on this unique memorial street. Afterwards, Monument Avenue seemed the logical place to erect more statues to Civil War heroes. The Lee Monument is the largest and grandest of the statues on Monument Avenue, with a 12-ton, 21′ high bronze statue sitting on a 40′ high granite pedestal designed by French architect Paul Pujot.
Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams, who covered last week’s standing-room only Monument Avenue Commission meeting, wrote that neither side appears willing to bend.
On the supporting side, he quoted Jim Leach of Williamsburg, writing, “‘I think it’s a mistake to do anything to these monuments. I believe it’s a sacrilege. I believe desecration of these monuments will increase racial strife, not lessen it,’ he said. ‘I would request that the blue-ribbon commission not be run as an African-American 101 class.'”
On the opposing side, he quoted activist Phil Wilayto of the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, who said, “They’ve taken off the table the obvious option of taking the statues down…This commission is illegitimate. It cannot be the body that decides what happens to the statues.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
