‘Blow it up!’ Richmond gives gleeful send-off to Robert E Lee

For 131 years it loomed over Richmond, Virginia, once the capital of America’s slave-owning south, sending a chilling message about the resilience of white supremacy to generations that passed beneath.

But at 8.55am on 8 September, a giant statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee and its granite pedestal, now covered with Black Lives Matter graffiti, was hoisted by work crews and lowered to the ground amid cheers, songs and whoops.

No one believed that this was going to fix systemic racism overnight. But, in the moment, there was elation after a decades-long campaign galvanised by last year’s racial justice protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in faraway Minneapolis.

“It’s a beautiful day for democracy,” said a 47-year-old man who gave his name as Rig and carried a monochrome version of the Stars and Stripes that bore the words “Black Lives Matter” and a raised fist.

“It’s time for us to be honest about our history. Germany has zero statues of Hitler or Rommel. They learned the lesson and we have to learn the lesson: we cannot coddle white supremacy.”

Lee was the most prominent southern general in the 1861-65 civil war that ended in victory for the Union led by President Abraham Lincoln. For more than a century, the statue was a constant reminder to Richmond’s Black residents of generational slavery.

Civil rights activists had long called for the Lee statue in Richmond to be removed, only to run into a brick wall with city and state officials. But after Floyd’s death sparked a nationwide uprising, the area around the statue became a hub for protests and occasional clashes with police.

Three other huge Confederate statues on Monument Avenue were removed last summer and Virginia governor Ralph Northam ordered that Lee should meet the same fate, citing the pain felt across the country over the death of Floyd. His plans were tied up in litigation until the supreme court of Virginia cleared the way last week.

Early last Wednesday, the deconstruction crew was surrounded by a heavy police presence. Officers closed streets for blocks around the stateowned traffic circle in Richmond, using heavy equipment and crowdcontrol barriers to keep people away.

Just before 9am, a worker who strapped harnesses around Lee and his horse lifted his arms in the air and counted down: “Three, two, one!” There were excited shouts from those watching, with little sign of counterprotests. Some chanted: “Whose streets? Our streets!”

Arianna Coghill, 24, an African American woman who has lived in Richmond for six years, recorded the scene on her phone. “It’s always been very difficult to see symbols glorifying people who brought my ancestors literally in chains,” she said. Goad Gatsby, 35, who has been arrested at protests here, said: “This was a statue created to attract defenders of white supremacy. The fact it’s removed: this neighbourhood is going to be safer.”

There were also notes of caution in a country where, just eight months ago, a Trump supporter carried the Confederate flag into the US Capitol in Washington during a deadly insurrection.

Russell Tee, 38, who is white, gripping a Black Lives Matter flag and wearing a T-shirt that said “Racism is not patriotism”, warned: “This was a physical monument but the mental monument of white supremacy remains. We have to remove it in our schools by teaching the real history.”

Workers sawed off the torso of Lee and loaded it on to a flatbed truck. The statue pieces will be hauled to an undisclosed state-owned facility until a decision is made about its final location. The pedestal will remain for now, although workers were due to remove decorative plaques and extricate a time capsule as well.

Scores of Confederate monuments have come down since the death of Floyd but Kevin Levin, a Bostonbased civil war historian and author of Searching for Black Confederates, said: “The removal of the Lee monument in Richmond is the most significant Confederate monument removal to date given its size [and] location in the former capital of the Confederacy.

“The dedication of these monuments 100 years ago could not have happened outside of a Jim Crow culture and legalised segregation. Though the Lost Cause [of the Confederacy] myth still has plenty of support in certain circles, it no longer unites white Americans politically as it once did.”

A statue of the African American tennis hero and Richmond native Arthur Ashe, erected in 1996, still stands on Monument Avenue. But what should become of Lee now? Rig opined: “Blow it up! They could put it on pay-per-view and I would definitely pay to see that. Blow it sky high!”