One by One, the Statues Are Coming Down. Who’s Next?
Jefferson Davis is gone. Robert E. Lee is pending. The political power is shifting on Richmond’s Monument Avenue.
As activists across the country descend on Confederate monuments and other statues to express outrage over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery — to name only three people recently killed for being Black in America — many of those statues are coming down, some by official decree, others by rope, chain, and sledgehammer.
The images from these protests are striking, powerful, and cathartic. On Monument Avenue in Richmond, the Robert E. Lee equestrian statue erected in 1890 has been covered in graffiti, flanked by demonstrators, and overlaid with a projected image of George Floyd; last week, protesters knocked down the 1907 statue of Jefferson Davis, and police towed it away. In Portsmouth, Virginia, demonstrators beheaded statues and defaced a Confederate monument with bolt cutters, bricks, and flames. In Birmingham, Alabama, demonstrators fastened a rope to a 52-foot Confederate obelisk and tied the other end to the back of a red pickup. The rope snapped before the monument toppled, but the mayor vowed to remove the statue. In less than 24 hours, he made good on that promise.
