Protest

In 2016, Charlottesville High School student Zyhana Bryant petitioned Charlottesville to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from a park downtown. Her petition caused a public response from two broad groups: white nationalists and Charlottesville’s Black community.¹ A year later, in the summer of 2017, white nationalists invaded the city of Charlottesville, rallying against taking down the Confederate statues, and Black Lives Matter activists from the city marched to voice their opposition of the statues. Tear gas was deployed by the authorities and beatings occurred, many were injured, and one person was killed.²

In 2017, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney formed a commission to “determine what to do with Confederate monuments located on historic Monument Avenue.”³ Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and other cities that were taking initiative to take down Confederate monuments, Richmond’s commission looked at letters and addressed the public in forums to assess the opinion of Richmond locals.⁴

The results of the Commission were four opinion groups:

1. Keep the monuments as they are
2. Keep them and add context
3. Relocate the monuments
4. Remove the monuments

Essentially, two of the groups wanted the statues to stay on Monument Avenue and two wanted them to come down.⁵

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Protesters

1. the lost cause

The Lost Cause is an interpretation of the Civil War which presents Confederates in a good light. The ideology blames the cause of the Civil War and the South seceding on state rights—like the South wanting to protect their land from a government like the English one before the Revolutionary War. It puts Confederate soldiers on pedestals, remembering them as heroes and saints rather than traitors and racists. Another way the Lost Cause skews history is that it remembers enslaved people as faithful and “unprepared for the responsibilities of freedom.”⁶

2. political and social environment

Slavery in the South was the way southern plantation owners and other workers made their living. The reason the South seceded was because of slavery, as it was strongly against emancipation while the North was working toward it.⁷

Protesters of the monuments saw them as representing slavery and upholding racist traitors of the Union. The political environment of the past decade has brought this to light because of things like the police brutality faced by and the unjust incarceration rates of Black Americans. Continuing to honor people who stood for slavery and some might say would stand for the unjust and racist system that continues today is seen as disrespectful and insulting to those advocating for the statues’ removal.⁸

The #BlackLivesMatter movement was created in 2013 after the murder of Trayvon Martin and subsequent trial which posthumously held Martin accountable for his own murder. The movement, while starting in response to the senseless killings of Black Americans, expanded to be much more than that. The term “Black Lives Matter” refers to how Black lives were systematically targeted, their societal contributions ignored, and the deprivation of basic human needs placed upon them.⁹

The photo above references the murder of George Floyd, whose murder brought the Black Lives Matter movement to more mainstream platforms than ever. Floyd was brutally murdered by a police officer in May of 2020, a video of which was posted on Facebook, leading to widespread protests erupting all over the country.¹⁰ The outburst of protests in 2020 made leaders take action concerning the statues on Monument Avenue.

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Proponents

1. Confederate heritage

Those against the removal of Richmond’s statues claimed the statues represented their Southern and or Confederate heritage. Removal of the statues would be removing a part of the South’s culture, something that some feel should be honored and remembered.¹¹

One proponent for the statues remaining was quoted saying,

“Leave the monuments alone. You can not judge one era by the standards of a different era. Please do not try to ‘sanitize’ our southern heritage.”¹²

Many felt that taking down the statues would rid southerners of their heritage, taking away something they feel is near to their hearts and represents their culture.

2. historical significance

Some against removal noted the historical significance of where the statues were put, who they were of, and what they represented in American history. For the Lee statue specifically, many found that he represented “what was best in a bad cause.”¹³ Lee’s statues and the others represented to the South the historical significance of the Civil War and what southerners fought for. It represented what was lost and honored fallen “heroes.”¹⁴

Virginia Governor, Fitzhugh Lee—the nephew of Robert E. Lee elected in 1885—made the statue of his uncle a priority when he was in office, not only to honor Lee but to keep the Confederate memory alive. Having fought in the Civil War, he had an even deeper personal connection to the Confederacy, but as governor he felt that it was paramount to the culture and history of the South. He was so invested in his Confederate culture that the Virginia General Assembly put him in charge of the memorial association. In his position, he was able to push statues being erected on Monument Avenue so history would be upheld.¹⁵

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1. Louis P. Nelson and Claudrena N. Harold, editors. “Introduction” In Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity. (University of Virginia Press, 2018), 1. ↩︎
2. John Edwin Mason. “History, Mine and Ours” In Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity, edited by Louis P. Nelson and Claudrena N. Harold. (University of Virginia Press, 2018), 23.  ↩︎
3. Christy S. Coleman and Dr. Gregg D. Kimball. Monument Avenue Commission Report 2018. MAC Report, July 2018, 3. ↩︎
4. Coleman and Kimball. Monument Avenue Commission Report 2018. (MAC Report, July 2018), 3, 59. ↩︎
5. Paul Kiem. “Righting History: Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia.” Agora 57, no. 3 (2022): 30. ↩︎
6. Caroline Janney. “The Lost Cause.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 2021.
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7. Janney. “The Lost Cause.” ↩︎
8. “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet,” NAACP, accessed December 5, 2024, https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet.
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9. Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors, “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement,” (2014), 1-2. ↩︎
10. “George Floyd is killed by a police officer, igniting historic protests,” History.com, 2020. ↩︎
11. Sarah E. Cribbs and Ruby Rim. “Heritage or Hate: A Discourse Analysis of Confederate Statues” American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research. (2019), 208. ↩︎
12. Cribbs and Rim. “Heritage or Hate,” (2019): 208. ↩︎
13. Kathy Edwards. “The Lee Monument and Inauguration of the Avenue.” In Monument Avenue: History and Architecture, by Kathy Edwards, Esme Howard, and Toni Prawl. (US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Cultural Resources, HABS/HAER, 1992), 17. ↩︎
14. Edwards. “The Lee Monument and Inauguration of the Avenue.” (1992): 17-18. ↩︎
15. Andrew Lawler, “The Origin Story of Monument Avenue, America’s Most Controversial Street,” National Geographic, 2020. ↩︎