Gen. Robert E. Lee Monument
Photo courtesy Josh Rinehults/Getty Images
From the beginning, the Robert E. Lee monument has stood at the center of disputes. The location, whether the piece should include allegorical figures, and even its height were argued over. The renowned French sculptor Antonin Mercié, who made the piece, replaced the Confederate general’s mount, Traveller, with a French thoroughbred that was a gelding. Unlike the other statutes that followed, no description is given of Lee’s battles or his achievements, just his surname in shouting all caps: LEE.
The unveiling of the Robert E. Lee statue on May 29, 1890
In 1890, nobody needed an explanation.
“The Lost Cause was their story,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said Thursday at a City Hall news conference announcing the formation of a Monument Avenue Commission and working group. “And they stuck to it. But it was not history,” he emphasized. Rather, it was a selective reinterpretation that emphasized the power of the white power structure. “In fact, it was nostalgia masquerading as history. But over decades, this nostalgia became embedded and subsequently a part of our history, part of the false narrative — the alternative facts, if you will — that we will begin to fact-check, starting today.”
John Mitchell Jr., the crusading African-American editor of the Richmond Planet and a member of the city’s Board of Aldermen, objected to monument’s symbolism.
“The men who talk most about the valor of LEE, and the blood of the brave Confederate dead are those who never smelt powder or engaged in the battle,” he wrote in 1890. “Most of them were at a table, either on top or under it when the war was going on.” The proliferation of Lost Cause adornments throughout Richmond angered Mitchell, who was born into slavery. He insisted that a Lee statue would bequeath to the future a “legacy of treason and blood.” In a further wrinkle, African-American laborers helped build the pedestal and place the massive statue upon the base. Mitchell suggested that the black men who put up the statue should, if that time came, be present to take it down.
His words reverberate today throughout the country, and their echoes could be heard in Stoney’s presentation. Though his delivery was passionate, he didn’t go far as Mitchell. He noted how Monument Avenue developed around the Lee statue as a means to sell real estate. (A national financial collapse delayed much of the building until about 1905, however.)
Among a welter of challenges is that the city doesn’t have jurisdiction over all the monuments. The Commonwealth of Virginia owns Lee.
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney (file photo)
Stoney reiterated at the news conference that when running for office, he stated that the Monument Avenue statues require context — “an explanation of what they actually are, who built them, why they were built and how they came to preside over the culture of this city.”
Stoney has impaneled a serious and credentialed group. Its task is to not only figure out a way to present Monument Avenue in the light of present times but also, Stoney said, to consider “new monuments that would reflect a broader, more inclusive story of our city.”
The commission is co-chaired by Gregg Kimball, director of education and outreach for the Library of Virginia, and Christy Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum. Kimball authored “American City, Southern Place,” and as curator of the Valentine museum during the 1990s, he organized what was then an unprecedented examination of the Jim Crow era. In recent years, the Library of Virginia has featured large exhibitions pertaining to Richmond’s role in the slave trade and Reconstruction. Coleman is former director of African-American interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg. Prior to the American Civil War Museum post, she was president and chief executive of Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the largest of its kind in the nation.
Earlier this year, Richmond magazine hosted a series of discussions titled “The Unmasking: Race and Reality in Richmond.” On a panel addressing “The Backstory Breakdown,” which covered a wide range of topics, several members who are now serving on this new commission spoke about the subject of Monument Avenue.
Kimball observed then that Monument is one of the few grand boulevards that exist in the United States. “It’s really a remarkable place. The ideology which built it, I have no interest in defending, obviously. But at the same time, [the monuments] should be interpreted correctly. Let’s talk about what these statues really do mean.”
In his view, the best Confederate monument in Richmond is the Hollywood Cemetery pyramid, “because it’s about loss. And, perhaps not surprisingly, women built it.” He added that Richmonders are chauvinistic about their history. “The problem is, we really don’t know our history.”
Julian Hayter, a historian, author and professor at the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies, remarked, "Every time we start talking about Monument Avenue, it's like throwing Miracle-Gro on Richmond's character flaws. We have the same conversation over, over and over … It brings out the requisite voices from either side of the particular issue.” And little advance is made.
Lauranett Lee, a public historian, educator and founding curator of African-American history at the Virginia Historical Society, said then that she thought that rather than removal, the statues in place serve an educational purpose.
“When the monuments were erected between 1890 and 1929, it was the nadir for black people, it was the lowest point,” she said. “That's when people were being lynched on a daily basis. ... That's when those monuments were erected. … I think we need to keep them there. We need to learn from them. We need to look at Richmond as a museum itself — the museum is not just in a building, but a landscape. And those monuments say something not only about the people at that time but also about contemporary history as well.”
The Monument Avenue Commission also includes Ed Ayers, historian, author of “The Promise of the New South” and former University of Richmond president; Stacy Burrs, board member of the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia; Sarah Shields Driggs, a member of the Richmond Public Art Commission and co-author of “Richmond’s Monument Avenue”; and Coleen A. Butler-Rodriguez, a Historic Richmond board advisor, trustee of the charitable nonprofit Roller-Bottimore Foundation, president of the Fan Townhouse and Garden Club and board member of the Monument Avenue Preservation Society. The group is rounded out by council representatives Andreas Addison (1st District) and Kim Gray, (2nd District).
The commission will hear public views in two meeting before the end of September, and information is forthcoming. In the meantime, a for-the-moment rudimentary website is up to solicit opinions.
