(PatriotWise.com) – In Richmond, Virginia, which served as the Confederacy’s capital during the American Civil War, a Black-owned construction company dismantled and removed the last public Confederate statue on display on Monday.
A small group of onlookers cheered as the memorial to Ambrose Powell Hill, a Confederate general killed in battle days before the war ended in April 1865, was taken down.
In 2020, Richmond started taking down a dozen Confederate monuments as part of an effort to address the legacy of slavery in the American South. State laws were used to protect Confederate statues erected by Southern states that supported slavery and fought to leave the Union.
Defenders of the statues argue that their removal would be equivalent to erasing history because they serve as memorials to the bravery of those who fought to defend the South.
Richmond’s mayor, Levar Stoney, stated that the city has become more inclusive without the monuments and that it is necessary to remove symbols that present a false narrative of American history.
He told reporters on Monday that this started two years ago when we sought to turn the page on our Confederate history and start writing a new chapter.
“The Lost Cause has come to an end today.”
In recent years, many cities, including Richmond, have eliminated reminders of the South’s slavery-related past. After demonstrations against racism and police brutality that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020, the campaign gained traction.
In September 2021, a statue honoring Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, was demolished.
The removal of Hill’s imposing monument, which had been in place for more than 130 years, was delayed partly by a controversy over what should be done with the general’s remains, which had been interred beneath the statue in 1891.
According to the Times-Dispatch, a court order issued last week allowed workers to start the removal. According to the Times-Dispatch, Hill’s remains will be reinterred at a grave site near Culpeper, Virginia, where he was born.
Richmond hired Team Henry Enterprises, a black-owned construction company, to take down the monument. According to news reports, the statue will eventually be transferred to the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia.
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