Robert E. Lee Monument
The Robert E. Lee monument, shown here during an Easter on Parade event, is owned by the state of Virginia. (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
During a two-hour meeting Tuesday night, the Monument Avenue Commission discussed legal opinions concerning Richmond's Civil War statues, how best to disseminate input collected on its website and plans to invite additional public conversation.
The commission, empaneled by Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney to discuss the future of the Confederate-related statuary, met in an open working session attended by about 80 people at the Library of Virginia.
There was no public comment time at the meeting, though some attendees carried placards urging, “Tear Them Down.” But one aspect of the nearly two-hour meeting was to make clear that legally, the City of Richmond cannot arbitrarily decide to knock the statues from their pedestals. The commission members also discussed the information collected from its website and how best to make that data available and move forward in the discussion. Meetings, large and small, for talking and for listening, will occur through the first quarter of 2018.
A meeting scheduled for Sept. 13 was postponed after a boisterous Aug. 9 meeting and a violent demonstration surrounding plans to remove a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville on Aug. 11 and 12.
City Attorney Allen L. Jackson read his legal opinions into the record, which are also publicly available here.
The Commonwealth of Virginia owns the Robert E. Lee statue and the medallion of grass upon which it sits; where Easter on Parade crowds gather, hacky-sackers and occasional sunbathers visit, and, on occasion, protests occur. The remainder of the monuments, including that of Wimbledon champion, writer and activist Arthur Ashe, are the city’s responsibility. Amending or otherwise changing state and city regulations would be required before displacing any of the statutes. Placing permanent signs, however, in the opinion’s words, “that provide contextual information about them, and do not disturb the monuments themselves or interfere with the ability of reasonable people to view them,” isn’t as likely to raise legal issues.
Christy Coleman, co-chair of the commission and CEO of the American Civil War Museum, described how the commission's website has received, to date, more than 1,200 responses to its “Register Your Input” request. These personal, and sometimes lengthy, statements prior to the Charlottesville violence ran the gamut from “Tear Them Down” to “Save Our Statues.” Afterward, she said, a “centralizing” of views emerged, that of potentially presenting a form of context. She noted, too, that there was “a lot of pleading, ‘Please don’t let our city devolve into this,’ " meaning the violence in Charottesville.
Interns are manually entering these opinions for public consumption, but, also dividing the views into categories, such as “Keep,” “Remove,” “Add Contex,” “Add Monuments,” “Relocate,” and “Specific Suggestions.” Personal addresses and phone numbers are now in a “blind cell” that cannot be viewed.
A presentation was made by the American Civil War Museum about a website devoted to explaining the history of Monument Avenue, which includes contemporary accounts and a variety of imagery. “On Monument Avenue” is a collaborative effort between the ACWM, the Library of Virginia, The Valentine and the Virginia Historical Society. The site includes a regular blog feature that with posts focusing on individuals and circumstances surrounding the boulevard’s origins and the men commemorated there.
The commission members discussed ways to move the discussion forward and into the community, which is already ongoing as members meet with various organizations ranging from heritage to social justice groups, and in the future, with faith, history and civic organizations. That brought up the need, too, for another meeting that would include public comments. Coleman cited how organizations outside the commission are pursuing their own Monument Avenue visions.
Camden Whitehead, associate professor of interior design at the Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts, spoke about the Middle of Broad Studio (mOb), a VCU experimental lab in partnership with the Storefront for Community Design, which received a $30,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a design competition, “General Demotion/General Devotion." In a description that provided one of the evenings few chuckles, Whitehead described the earlier discussions of creating “a prosthetic device” to alter the meaning of the Lee Monument.
The public meeting back in August drew a packed to overflowing audience of passionate people eager to share their opinions and many more who were turned away. Part of the issue was that a number of people who spoke weren’t Richmond residents. How to sort out this challenge wasn’t immediately clear. While smaller meetings with individual groups is necessary, 1st District council member Andreas Addison said, how to include “people who couldn’t make it to the public meeting, but want to know what’s going on,” and how best the commission can connect with them needs to be determined.
Kim Gray, heading into nine years of public service, observed that one of the characteristics of being on a public body is that people will say hurtful things. “As difficult as it is, though, it’s part of our democratic process. People want to know that they’re being heard. It’s difficult and not an experience folks are generally used to.”
Commissioner Julian Hayter, a University of Richmond professor and civil rights historian, said of the August commission meeting, "We were disappointed by some of the comments, but given what’s happened throughout the United States over the past six or seven months, it was relatively – I don’t want to say civil — but forgive me, it wasn’t the debacle that the media portrayed it to be the next day in many ways. We learned many things at the forum.” As an historian he’s accustomed to reading from distressing sources that he doesn’t agree with. Public meetings are, he said, “an integral part of the process.”
