The city finally removed statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson four years after a previous attempt to take down the monuments prompted the deadly Unite the Right rally. Here are photographs and videos of the removal.
On Saturday morning, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, finally removed large bronze statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from two public parks. The move comes nearly four years after a previous effort by the city to take down the monuments sparked the notorious “Unite the Right” rally on August 11 and 12,2017, when white-supremacist protesters clashed with counter-protesters. Dozens were injured in the violence, and a 33-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, was murdered by a white supremacist who drove his car into a group of counter-protesters. The removal of the statues had originally been approved by the Charlottesville City Council in 2017, in response to a petition started by a then-student at a local high school, Zyahna Bryant. In April, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the city could take down the statues, overturning an earlier Circuit Court ruling that had blocked the move.
