Editor’s note: Instead of our regular Sunday Story, we are sharing some past articles we hope will shed light on the history of Monument Avenue and its Civil War memorials, following last week’s announcement from Gov. Ralph Northam that the state-owned statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee would be removed as soon as possible, and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s intent to bring forward an ordinance to remove Monument Avenue’s other Confederate statues as soon as it is legal to do so, on July 1.
Protesters gather at the Lee monument last week. (Photo by Jay Paul)
As a city, we tend move slowly when contemplating major policies, and then, as though jabbed by a pin, all at once. The intervention of history can yank a particular decision from committee and commission into the light and heat of action. Through the years, Richmond magazine has taken up the various questions before the public and government, from “What to Do With the Baseball Park?” to “What About Monument Avenue?” and the latter question is inextricably connected to race, agency and political representation. We now find ourselves in that season when all is not as it once was, nor is it yet what it will become.
To some, recent events may seem abrupt, however, as in the achievement of women gaining the vote a century ago, it’s been a long time coming.
That Colossal Shadow
Statues are symbols, and the meaning of those on Monument Avenue is especially fraught: Supporters argue that they symbolize heritage; many others see hate.
“Public art is the expression of the time in which it’s made,” says Richmond artist Hamilton Glass. “It is the physical representation of values. The relevance [of that work] is decided by the community. And if something is no longer relevant, then that’s where the conversation begins. If we don’t believe in this anymore, then maybe it should go to an appropriate place where we can learn about what it meant.”
Something Someday Could Happen On Monument Avenue, Maybe
This 2018 article, written after the Monument Avenue Commission released its report nearly two years ago, explains the bureaucratic obstacles that have until recently existed to impede the removal of Confederate statues and considers what to do with them once they are taken off their pedestals.
Out of the meetings and pollings, the commission came to understand this: “If anything is abundantly clear, it is the vast majority of the public acknowledges Monument Avenue cannot and should not remain exactly as it is. Change is needed and desired.” The public, the report continues, “offered many fascinating ideas, and most seemed to favor a multi-faceted and highly creative approach.”
The Unfinished Revolution
Reconstruction in Richmond advanced political and educational changes for black residents through the 1890s, but many of those gains evaporated as the federal government looked the other way.
A tattered-at-the-edges Jamaican spice box, with a slot at the top and fading letters reading “Colored,” once held the first ballots cast by black Virginians.
Library of Virginia curator and historian Gregg Kimball explains, “These were votes for delegates to the state’s first constitutional convention after the Civil War. It shows you how they were putting this together on the fly; there’s no standardization. Everybody knows for whom these freedmen are voting. And think about this: It’s highly likely that your former master may now employ you, and he’s standing there watching you vote.”
Despite the potential hazard at the polls, 90% of eligible blacks voted. The results sent 24 blacks to the 105-member constitutional convention that met from December 1867 through April 1868. Pretty astounding, right? Between 1867 and 1891, the state also had interracial juries, an interracial third party, black representatives in both houses of the General Assembly and a black man from Louisa County in Congress.
But by 1902, these new political participants were stripped of many of their rights and wouldn’t regain them for almost 70 years.
Other Selections
The Monument Avenue Enigma
Businessman Lewis Harvie Blair, a Confederate veteran, was among the first residents of Monument Avenue. He regretted his military service and considered “the more than three years wasted in the vain effort to maintain that most monstrous institution, African slavery, the real, tho’ States’ Rights were the ostensible, cause of the War.”
Lee in the Field
The anatomy of the curious photograph of the Gen. Robert E. Lee monument standing in a field of tobacco.
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