07/09/2021

Charlottesville to Remove Robert E. Lee Statue

The statue was at the center of a White Nationalist rally in 2017

Four years after a woman was killed and dozens were injured when white nationalists protested the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va., city officials said they would remove the statue on Saturday, along with a nearby monument to Stonewall Jackson, another Confederate general.

The announcement by the city on Friday came more than four years after the city council initially put forth a plan to remove the statue of Lee from what was then known as Lee Park, prompting scores of white nationalists to descend on Charlottesville in August 2017 in a "Unite the Right" rally to protest the removal.

Counter-protesters confronted the rally, and a white supremacist from Ohio drove into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, killing a woman, Heather Heyer, and injuring dozens of others. The violence that day, as well as the open racism and anti-Semitism displayed at the rally, intensified calls to remove Confederate statues across the country.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The New York Times.