CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Four years after a woman was killed and dozens were injured when white nationalists protested the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va., city officials said they would remove the statue on Saturday, along with a nearby monument to Stonewall Jackson, another Confederate general. The announcement by the city on Friday came more than four years after the City Council initially put forth a plan to remove the statue of Lee from what was then known as Lee Park, prompting scores of white nationalists to descend on Charlottesville in August 2017 in a “Unite the Right” rally to protest the removal. Counterprotesters confronted the rally, and a white supremacist drove into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, killing a woman, Heather Heyer, and injuring dozens of others. The violence that day, as well as the open racism and anti-Semitism displayed at the rally, intensified calls to remove Confederate statues across the country. It’s been a long time coming,” said Zyahna Bryant, a University of Virginia student who was a ninth grader in Charlottesville when she started a petition in March 2016 calling on the city to remove the statue of Lee and to rename Lee Park, which is now called Market Street Park.

Source: New York Times July 09, 2021 23:15 UTC