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When rioters tore through the U.S. Capitol last month, some of them grabbing Confederate battle flags, they failed to come across a statue of the most famous rebel general, Robert E. Lee.
The statue of Lee, which represented the state of Virginia as part of the National Collection of the Capitol Statuary for 111 years, had been removed a few weeks earlier – one of at least 160 Confederate public symbols removed or moved from public spaces in 2020, according to a new tally, the Southern Poverty Law Center shared with the Associated Press before publishing it.
The Montgomery, Alabama-based legal center, which maintains a gross tally of nearly 2,100 Confederation statues, symbols, signs, buildings and public parks, released the latest figures from its “Whose Heritage?” database Tuesday. He’s been tracking a movement to demolish monuments since 2015, when a white supremacist walked into a South Carolina church and killed several black parishioners.
“These racist symbols only serve to support revisionist history and the belief that white supremacy remains morally acceptable,” SPLC Chief of Staff Lecia Brooks said in a statement. “This is why we believe all symbols of white supremacy should be removed from public spaces.”
Some time after visitors and tourists return to the U.S. Capitol, there will be a statue saluting Barbara Johns of Virginia, a 16-year-old black girl who staged a strike in 1951 over unequal conditions at her isolated high school in Farmville. His actions led to the court-ordered integration of public schools across the United States, via the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education.
Each state legislature can choose up to two representatives to be honored from the Capitol Collection. In December, a state commission recommended replacing the statue of Lee with a statue of Johns. Supporters told the PA that the Virginia legislature has almost finalized its elevation alongside George Washington.
Joan Johns Cobbs, Barbara Johns’ younger sister, is thrilled with this honor to come. She is also happy that it didn’t happen until January 6, when the Capitol was violated.
“You can’t imagine how sad I was to see what was going on in the Capitol building,” Cobbs said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God. I’m pretty glad his statue isn’t there already. I wondered what would have happened. “
Long considered offensive to black Americans, Lee’s Capitol Statue was not the only one to depict a figure of the lost cause, a term referring to the belief that fighting alongside slavers during the Civil War was right. and heroic. Jefferson Davis, who served as President of the Confederate States of America after becoming a United States Senator from Mississippi, is one of two figures representing that state on Capitol Hill.
SPLC says there are still 704 Confederate monuments in the United States and removing some of them can be difficult, especially in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee – states where lawmakers have adopted policies protecting these monuments.
The movement to remove these symbols from public spaces has become part of the national calculation of racial injustice following the murder last May of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis policeman stuck his knee in the Floyd’s neck for several minutes. Although activists have called for the lowering of Confederate flags and the destruction of monuments for decades, a wider push was sparked after a white supremacist shot dead nine black parishioners at a Bible study meeting in June 2015 at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
“Exposing children to anything that falsely promotes the idea of white superiority and black inferiority is dehumanizing,” Brooks of the SPLC said in its statement.
That’s why Johns ‘honor couldn’t come at a better time, said Cameron Patterson, executive director of the Robert Russa Moton Museum, a keeper of Johns’ legacy.
Johns moved from New York to live with his grandmother in Prince Edward County, Virginia during World War II. She attended Moton High School in Farmville where, according to her memoir, the separate school had poor facilities, lacked science labs, and had no gymnasium.
On April 23, 1951, at age 16, Johns led his classmates in a strike against the unsanitary conditions at Moton High, drawing the attention of civil rights attorneys at the NAACP. Lawyers filed a federal case that became one of five cases considered by the United States Supreme Court in the Brown decision. In 1954, the High Court declared segregation unconstitutional.
This year will mark the 70th anniversary of the Johns protest. She died in 1991, aged 56.
“It is truly recognized that its inclusion in the Statuary Hall collection will truly be a great opportunity for people to better understand the history of Moton in its entirety,” said Patterson. “So not only do they get to know Barbara and who she was, but they learn more about her classmates. They learn those who continue to work in this community, in regards to the struggle for educational equality.”
Cobbs, Johns’ sister, agreed.
“I hope the young people will see something in it that they can emulate,” she said. “Being so young, seeing an injustice and deciding to do something about it is quite remarkable.
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