Debates immediately sprang up in late June after Mayor Levar Stoney announced the creation of a commission to add context to the Confederate statues on Richmond's Monument Avenue. Hot on the heels of Charlottesville’s own debate over the removal of a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and the unveiling of Richmond’s first monument to a woman of color — Maggie L. Walker — a Monument Avenue Commission subcommittee, the State of Confederate Memorials, met today for the first time. The topic of their meeting: What exactly does it mean to add context?
Composed of 1st District Councilman Andreas Addison, Richmond Tourism Coordinator Anedra Bourne, Public Art Coordinator Ellyn Parker, Department of Public Resources Director Julie Langan, and full committee member and co-chair Christy Coleman, the sub-group discussed examples of adding context to monuments in other parts of the country.
Coleman mentioned university settings as a model for what the group was hoping to achieve, specifically the University of Mississippi’s efforts to add context to the 1906 Confederate monument on its campus.
“Yes, it was fueled by several racially insensitive events, but they began that conversation, they invited in consultants to help them facilitate that conversation and they continued to work with their own faculty and staff as well,” Coleman said during the meeting. “Three years after that they have chosen some cases to add context, and they also made some decisions about renaming roadways and buildings.”
Other members also expressed a desire to learn more about what the local community suggests as well as applying their own specific knowledge to the conversation. Though today's gathering was only a subcommittee meeting, a full meeting of the Monument Avenue Commission will be open to the public and held at the Virginia Historical Society at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, August 9. This will be the first of several meetings held by the commission in the hopes of engaging the community and determining what context to add.
Schedules for the commission and subcommittee meetings can be found on the commission's website.