Charlottesville has attracted white nationalists from across the country because of its Robert E. Lee Statue, which the city council wants to remove.
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Virginia state police in front of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, where white nationalists organized a “Unite The Right” rally.
Charlottesville, Virginia is the site of this weekend’s “Unite The Right” rally, an event that drew white nationalists from all over the country to the city. Since April 2017, when the Charlotte City Council first voted to remove a bronze equestrian Robert E. Lee sculpture, the city has been the site of alt-right protests and Ku Klux Klan rallies.
Robert E. Lee was among the most successful Confederate generals during the Civil War, but he was the general who surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox in 1865. Lee lived until 1870, dying at age 63. Statues of Lee were erected throughout the South and the movement to remove them was sparked by the 2015 killings of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina by a white supremacist.
Here’s what you need to know about the statue that drew white nationalists to Charlottesville.
Getty Ku Klux Klan members at the July 8 rally at the Robert E. Lee Statue.
In April, the Charlottesville City Council voted to sell the bronze statue that stands in downtown Charlottesville. As WVIR reports, the city council also unanimously voted to rename Lee Park. However, two members of the five-member city council still voted against removing the statue.
At the time, City Attorney Craig Brown admitted that there would be legal battles ahead to remove the statue.
“There is a pending court suit challenging the right to relocate the Lee statue, ” Brown told Richmond.com . “I think the process is geared toward a contractual agreement to move the statue somewhere else, but my advice is to have that be contingent on a favorable ruling in the court case.”
In May, WDBJ reported that Judge Richard Moore ruled that the statue’s removal would be delayed by six months. The Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups argued that a Virginia monument law stops war monuments from being removed. However, the city government has said that the statue of Lee and another one of the Confederate General Stonewall Jackson were not initially erected to honor Civil War veterans.
Moore said that the city could still rename Lee and Jackson parks, and could continue plans to remove the Lee statue, as well as plans to replace them with other historical monuments. One idea is to build a memorial to the slaves who lived in Charlottesville in Jackson Park, notes the Daily Progress.
Lee Park was renamed Emancipation Park, while Jackson Park’s new name is Justice Park.
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Getty Police standing in riot gear around the statue on August 12.
This weekend’s rally is not the first time alt-right leader and white nationalist Richard Spencer and others have protested at Charlottesville. As The Daily Progress reported, he led a torch-wielding rally on May 13.
“We will not be replaced from this park, ” Spencer told the crowd in May, CBS News notes . “We will not be replaced from this world. Whites have a future. We have a future of power, of beauty, of expression, ”
Spencer was born in Boston, but attended the University of Virginia.
Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer called the May protest “either profoundly ignorant or was designed to instill fear in our minority populations in a way that hearkens back to the days of the KKK. Either way, as mayor of this city, I want everyone to know this: we reject this intimidation. We are a welcoming city, but such intolerance is not welcome here.”
Erich Reimer, the chair of the Charlottesville Republican Party, said the “intolerance and hatred they seek to promote is utterly disgusting and disturbing beyond words.”
On July 8, the Ku Klux Klan held a rally near the statue, but they were outnumbered by counterprotesters. Twenty-two people were attested at that rally.
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Getty Counter-protesters on August 12.
The Robert E. Lee Statue isn’ t something that was built when Virginia was a member of the Confederate States of America. It wasn’ t even built in the years after the Civil War. The statue was commissioned in 1917,52 years after the war ended, and was finally erected in 1924,59 years after the war ended.
According to the Department of the Interior, the statue was commissioned in 1917 by the National Sculpture Society and philanthropist Paul Goodlow McIntire. Henry Shrady designed the statue, but died before it was finished. Leo Lentelli finished it in 1924 and it was cast at the Roman Bronze Works in Brooklyn, New York.
The statue stands 26 feet high. It joined the list of the Naitonal Register of Historic Places in 1997.
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Getty The nearby Sronewall Jackson statue.
Removing the statues of Lee and Jackson will not come cheap. In October 2016, Richmond.com reported that city staff estimate that it will cost $330,000 to remove the Lee statue and $370,000 to remove the Jackson one.
The Thomas Jonathan Jackson Statue was also commissioned by McIntire and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was erected in 1921.
McIntire was a wealthy philanthropist whose name is all over the University of Virginia. As C-Ville.com reported in 2016, McIntire donated four parks to Charlottesville, supported the city’s first library and UVA’s McIntire Park, McIntire School of Commerce and McIntire Amphitheatre are all named for him.
While McIntire donated sculptures of two Confederate generals, one of the four parks he donated was named after Booker T. Washington and planned as a “playground for the colored citizens of Charlottesville.” The two other statues he donated were are of Lewis and Clark and George Rogers Clark. The Charlottesville Regional Center even named an award, the Paul Goodloe McIntire Citizenship Award, after him in 1975.
McIntire, who was born in Charlottesville, lived from 1860 to 1952.
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Getty Counter-protesters on August 12.
Since the 2015 shooting of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina by a white supremacist, city and state legislatures across the country have been rethinking their Confederate memorials.
