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Some 130 years after 10,000 men, women, and children carried the bronze pieces of Richmond's statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to its present site, Virginia conservation experts are making plans to move it.
Relocation of the 13-ton monument, which originally traveled from Paris in 1890 and was sent to Virginia by rail, follows nationwide protests against racial inequality in America after the death of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis police custody.
CONFEDERATE STATUE SPLATTERED WITH RED PAINT OUTSIDE ALABAMA COURTHOUSE
Along with calls to shift some government funding away from law enforcement to social programs, the movement has brought heightened scrutiny of monuments across the Southeast honoring men who fought for the Confederacy, a coalition of states seeking to preserve slavery.
Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced his plans for Richmond's Lee sculpture in June, but following through on relocating the 21-foot tall monument, which rests atop a granite pedestal nearly twice as high, has proven a conundrum. Complicating matters even more is a lawsuit challenging Northam, with an injunction barring the statue's removal.
An inspection crew from the Virginia Department of General Services takes measurements while inspecting the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The question posed to Richmond Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant is whether the Lee statue is an important cultural work that marks the state's Southern heritage or is first and foremost a painful reminder of the deep history of racism and White supremacy in Virginia.
Richmond, a former capital of the Confederacy, has slowly taken steps away from parts of its past, removing four other city-owned Confederate statues in July.
According to the Associated Press, Pennsylvania-based B.R. Howard Conservation developed the plan to take Lee's statue away from Monument Avenue. The company's proposal calls for taking out 16 bronze pins to separate the statue from its base, taking the harness and reins of Lee's horse, attaching padded straps to the statue, and then using a crane to lower it to the ground.
Lee's likeness would then be cut into three travel-sized pieces – based on written accounts describing its assembly – as it is driven to an undisclosed storage site.
There is a separate plan for disassembling the monument's 40-foot high base, which may contain a time capsule. Since Confederate monument removals elsewhere in the United States have provoked tension, B.R. Howard Conservation must also ensure worker safety.
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In New Orleans, contractors working to remove the city's Confederate statues in 2017 faced threats and often wore protective gear while working.
The Lee statue was created by the renowned French sculptor Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercie.
It is considered a “masterpiece,” according to its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, where it has been listed since 2007.
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