Statue of Robert Lee Abducted in Charlottesville Four Years After Supremacist Revolt | International

Statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson, two generals in the Confederate Army who rebelled against the United States to defend slavery by causing civil war, have been withdrawn this Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia. The monuments have stood in the city for 97 years and will be kept until city councilors vote on their future. Lee and Jackson’s plays – known as the Stonewall – are loaded with ominous symbolism. Hundreds of white supremacists flocked to the city in August 2017 to protest the authorities’ decision to remove the statues. The protest led to race riots which resulted in the death of a 32-year-old woman, who was run over by a 20-year-old neo-Nazi who drove his car against the anti-fascist mob who rejected the presence of the far right .

The city has installed fences and restricted traffic in the area for the removal of the statues this Saturday. The authorities, however, were not afraid of racial manifestations like those experienced four years ago. “We invite people to join us in the park… We think there are many members of our community who really want to be there to make this finally happen,” said a spokesperson for the city. From 6:00 a.m., people started to arrive, some wearing black T-shirts and the Black Lives Matter logo (black lives matter). The atmosphere was festive. Photographs were taken, proclamations were released and a few tears were shed during the withdrawal of two works that hurt amid rising racial tensions under the Donald Trump administration.

The statues have been the subject of a long and bitter legal battle since high school students launched a signature campaign in 2016 to remove them. Charlottesville councilors endorsed the withdrawal in a close 3-2 vote in March 2017. The move sparked an almost immediate trial from relatives of Confederate fighters in the Virginia Division, one of eleven rebel entities. who took up arms against President Abraham Lincoln. The petition called for the maintenance of the bronze works in memory of the families, which was supported by the district judges. In April of the same year, however, the state Supreme Court overturned the decision and gave the green light for the revocation.

The orden judicial fue tomada como un desafío en los Estados Unidos de Trump, un presidente that revitalizó a los movimientos de la ultraderecha y supremacistas blancos, quienes tomaron el fallo como una oportunidad de plantarse contra el revisionismo histórico que se había impulsado en la Administración de Barack Obama. Charlottesville then became a defensive territory for movements like the Ku Klux Klan and other movements that sympathized with the slave past of southern America and defended historical identity.

Crowds of young white men made a pilgrimage in May 2017 from different parts of the country to the statues of Lee and Stonewall. They arrived at night and holding torches. They shouted “they will not replace us” and “Russia is our friend”. Among the leaders was Richard Spencer, a supremacist who helped popularize the movement known as the alt-right. The protest was brief. In just over 10 minutes, police were forced to disperse it, but the moment has left one of the worst imprints of the early months of the Trump administration, which months later has avoided condemning the supremacist groups that had unleashed violence by defending the statues again.

The figure of Robert E. Lee is very prominent in the southern United States. He is the most important general among the Confederates, a movement that has left its mark in the region with more than 700 monuments around the country. The soldier’s name was used for schools and avenues. His name has fallen out of favor following recent movements for human rights and the fight against systemic racism. Finally, Lee’s family was a slaveholder. His treatment with the black slaves on his property was humiliating, as some historians have documented.