AS STATUES fall, neighbors take stock.

Some still against removing statues; others rethink stance

RICHMOND, Va. — She calls them “snakes,” “scoundrels” and “graffiti goons.” But Helen Marie Taylor, at 96 the grande dame of Richmond’s Monument Avenue, shares some qualities with the youthful throngs who keep marching past her mansion and toppling statues.

In 1968, as an advancing asphalt machine threatened to bury the avenue’s original paving blocks, Taylor dashed out of her Duncan Lee architectural gem and into a life of unlikely activism.

She stood in the truck’s path that day and went on over the next half-century, in the name of historic preservation, to defy police, get arrested and tangle with mayors, police chiefs and governors.

Just like some of today’s demonstrators, except that they are demanding change, the very thing Taylor and a dwindling number of allies are still fighting to stave off.

“What astonishes me is how few men there are today that are standing up and being counted,” she said in an interview at her home Wednesday, just hours before protesters ripped down the statue next door — of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy and her relative by marriage. “Nobody wants to be in confrontation.”

Not long ago, Taylor could count on the vast majority of her neighbors to share her zeal for preserving the five Confederate monuments towering over their street, one of the nation’s grandest residential boulevards. But the marches — protesting police brutality against blacks and racial injustice more broadly — have changed the way some longtime avenue residents see their street’s statues.

“Although in a way I regret it, I think the time has come to take them down,” said one man, 81, who has lived on Monument for nearly 50 years but spoke on the condition of anonymity because the subject is volatile.

The man, originally from North Carolina, said he had always accepted the monuments as “part of the landscape. … They were a pleasant sight if you didn’t think about what they stood for.”

After two weeks of marches, he has thought of little else.

“It’s a display of real feeling,” he said, marveling at the marchers’ diversity with his wife. “Just seeing it happen, I think, changed our mind.”

TENSIONS HIGH

No state has more statues to Southern leaders than Virginia, home to the former capital of the confederacy. Richmond, the capital, is where its most famous monuments are not tucked away in parks here and there, but showcased on a National Historic Landmark street built for that very purpose.

The monuments have long been a source of disagreement along the avenue, where some residents regard them as priceless historical artifacts, others as racially charged relics. Those tensions are higher now than ever, with the city newly empowered to remove its four statues; with Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, vowing to move the one the state owns; and with some demonstrators taking matters into their own hands.

Dueling neighborhood groups and Facebook pages have sprung up. The Monument Avenue Preservation Society’s board came out for removal Friday and apologized for allowing “the grandeur of the architecture to blind us to the insult of glorifying men for their roles in fighting to perpetuate the inhumanity of slavery.”

The unrelated Monument Avenue Preservation Group has been trumpeting a lawsuit to stop one statue from coming down. Some residents have handed out snacks to marchers and plastered Black Lives Matter signs on their doors, while others, feeling physically threatened, have begged police to clear the streets.

The demonstrations began May 30 with three nights of vandalism, looting and arson, but after that, they settled into peaceful marches led by a handful of young people preaching nonviolence. They celebrated on June 3 when word spread that Northam would cart off the monument to Robert E. Lee and that Democratic Mayor Levar Stoney would back removal of the rest.

But a court ruling on June 8, temporarily blocking Northam from removing the Lee statue, set off a spate of statue topplings.

Before striking Davis, vandals knocked down Confederate Gen. Williams Carter Wickham in one city park and Christopher Columbus, the explorer now reviled for mistreatment of indigenous peoples, in another.

Council member Kim Gray, who represents Monument Avenue as well as nearby black neighborhoods where she grew up, said she’s heard from some constituents who’ve been won over by the protesters, and others so terrified they’ve bought fire extinguishers and guns.

“People are reexamining how they see the world and think about these things. And that, I think, is great,” Gray said.

“But I think this movement — in pulling down Columbus and Jeff Davis — is losing some of the sympathy of the people because it’s already moving in that direction in a legal way. … I understand there’s an impatience involved and there’s a frustration level that’s peaking, but some of this is not Black Lives Matter. It’s people provoking more violence.”

‘LOVELY, INTERESTING’ STREET

But the statues are a source of immense pride for Taylor, whose father-in-law — a tobacco tycoon and descendant of President Zachary Taylor — chose to build a house beside the Davis monument in 1919 because he was related by marriage to the Confederate president. [President Taylor’s daughter was Davis’ first wife.]

Seated in a wicker rocker in her sunroom for an interview Wednesday, Taylor used a thick magnifying glass to read from a speech Lee’s military secretary, Charles Marshall, gave when the cornerstone for the general’s monument was laid in 1887.

“This statue will perpetuate no memory of infidelity to the Union as it was, and will teach no lesson inconsistent with a loyal and cheerful obedience to the authority of the Union as it is,” she said.

She looked up from her papers.

“That’s pretty noble,” she declared.

Taylor describes her great-grandfather as a benevolent slave owner.

“When Abraham Lincoln required them to read the Emancipation Proclamation, my great-grandfather got out on the balcony, with columns all around, and said he had never bought a slave in his life. He had never sold a slave in his life,” she said.

“He was born with a black family, and no scrap of paper would ever relieve him of his responsibility to take care of them.”

As for her own life on Richmond’s most famous street, she said it’s been “lovely and interesting. Interesting because you never get done with those d*** fools that want to tear things up, and so you just have to be prepared to stand firm,” she said. “And it’s lovely to look out your second-floor windows.”

It used to be, anyway. After protesters threw firecrackers and rocks at her house, and the Davis statue came down, Taylor closed her shutters.