Hours after a monument to two Confederate generals was removed, Charlottesville City Council voted and decided on Saturday afternoon.
After the removal of one statue for General Robert E. Lee, another with Sacagawea became an emergency issue as well in light of recent events at Charlottesville’s University campus due to white supremacy groups entering town this weekend.
The council’s unanimous 5-0 vote came after crowds cheered when the bronze statues depicting Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were carted away Saturday morning, as they should be!
The council’s unanimous 5-0 vote came after crowds cheered at the bronze statues depicting Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were carted away Saturday morning, prompting a celebration that spread outside of City Hall among those who lined up for hours to see history in action.
The residents of Charlottesville, Virginia awoke to the sound of a helicopter and watched two statues being removed from their pedestals. Four years after white supremacists stormed into town to protest the removal of these monuments honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, it is now time for them to go down with dignity in order not be seen as an icon or symbol that represents division among our nation any longer
Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker told reporters and observers in a speech near the monuments that removing these statues is just one small step closer to helping Charlottesville, Virginia, and America grapple with deep-rooted racism.
Seth Wispelwey traveled from Tucson, Arizona.
“This matters a lot to me,” said Wispelwey, who grew up in the city. “Some might say it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s a piece of gospel-specific history that we can liberate our public spaces that erased Black and brown families a century ago. I wanted to feel a little bit of victory today after a really hard last four years.”
The Lewis, Clark, and Sacagaweastatue is a monument that was gifted to Charlottesville in 1919. The Jackson statue has been up since 1921, and the Lee statues were first placed there in 1924. They will be stored until City Council decides what they want to do about them- sell or destroy or otherwise dispose of these monuments?
“This monument symbolizes a lot of things to our community,” Niya Bates, 31, of Charlottesville, said. “So to see that baggage, literal baggage — all of the racism, the history of enslavement, the inequities in our community — picked up, put on a truck and taken out,” was good.
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