Williamsburg monument to be moved
Williamsburg’s controversial Confederate war memorial has been frequently moved over more than a century in the city. Now it is to be taken away from a public park after a historic vote by the City Council.
The unanimous vote came amid the concerns expressed by one council member that the 20-foot tall monument in Bicentennial Park is incompatible with the values held by the city. The vote followed a passionate public hearing Tuesday in which more than 30 speakers expressed a wide range of opinions.
However, the memorial’s removal may not be imminent because the United Daughters of the Confederacy has until Jan. 31, 2021, to take full ownership of it.
The memorial will be the latest Confederate monument to be removed from a public location in Virginia after Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 25.
The monument was erected in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and is dedicated to Williamsburg and James City County’s Confederate soldiers and sailors. It features Confederate flags in its stonework. Although it was recently daubed with a BLM slogan it has escaped the widespread destruction of monuments in locations such as Richmond and Portsmouth.
Williamsburg City Council held a special meeting to decide the monument’s fate after Gov. Ralph Northam signed a bill earlier this year allowing localities to remove, relocate or add context to Confederate monuments starting July 1. City Council members backed a staff recommendation supporting the removal of the monument at the earliest possible date, allowing for the UDC to take possession and relocate the monument by Jan. 31, 2021. If the UDC fails to take possession of the monument, the city will consider the monument “abandoned” and dispose of it. The council authorized City Manager Andrew Trivette to pay a reasonable cost to move the monument to storage and then a location identified by the UDC.
City attorney Christina Shelton outlined the history of the monument. In 1905, the UDC started raising funds to build the monument. Both Williamsburg City Council and James City Council Board of Supervisors donated $500. The UDC raised another $500 form private donations.
The City Council authorized the building of the monument on Palace Green and it was erected in 1908. It remained there until 1932. When Palace Green was sold to the Williamsburg Holding Co., the monument was moved to the courthouse property on South England Street where it remained from 1932 to 1969. When the courthouse was moved to Court Street in 1969 the monument was moved to the new courthouse property. When the courthouse moved again in 1999 to Monticello Avenue, the monument remained on Court Street, which was then later bought by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The
UDC then requested the monument be moved to Bicentennial Park. Its request was approved by the City Council on May 11, 2000. The monument has stood in Bicentennial Park since then.
Trivette said since advertising the public hearing, the city received a request from UDC to take possession of the monument.
”They have asked the city to consider providing some cost to help them with the removal and the replacement of the monument at a different location,” he said.
City Council member Caleb Rogers said it was strange that the statue was dedicated 40 years after the Civil War ended.
“This, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of the day, speak toward how I see the statute — that it does not hold the same values that we should in the city of Williamsburg,” he said.
He said the statue was erected after a Virginia constitution that established segregated schools, poll taxes and literacy tests that “directly targeted Black men and women.”
Vice Mayor Pat Dent said removal of the statue from Bicentennial Park was an important “step in eliminating divisiveness.”
Mayor Doug Pons said there was no place for the Confederate monument on public property. However, he recognized that the UDC jointly owned the monument and has a legal right to take it, as well as to mourn family members who died in the Civil War.
Council member Ted Maslin quoted Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s opposition to monuments in the era of reconstruction after the war.
“Robert E. Lee feared that these reminders of the past would preserve fierce passions for the future. Such emotions threatened his vision for a speedy reconciliation,” he said.
More than 40 people attended the public hearing Tuesday. COVID-19-related social distancing rules meant many of them were housed in a separate room at the Stryker Center.
Speakers included Corwin Hammond, an African American man whose grandmother told him as a child that Confederate monuments were “erected to intimidate us, to always remind us we need to stay in place.”
“To the African American, everything Confederate is a reminder of a painful past,” he said. “It’s painful to get up every morning and be reminded that you live in a country that really does not regard you as human.”
Some speakers argued the monument marks the deaths of soldiers and compared it to a gravesite.
Hugh Newton spoke of two great-grandfathers from Williamsburg who fought for the Confederate side during the Civil War. He argued for the monument to be contextualized and retained by the UDC.
“It’s not a monument of some general on a horse with a sword. It’s meant to honor the men and women who served,” he said.
Nick Belluzzo spoke on behalf of a group of graduate students at the College of William & Mary’s Department of American Studies, Anthropology and History. He said Confederate monuments spoke to “the history of the rise of Jim Crow, of discrimination and exclusion not only from politics but the control of public spaces in which these monuments reside.”
Belluzzo expressed opposition to the city paying for the removal of the monument and said the UDC should foot the bill for the removal of the monument.
“If the UDC is to take possession they should fully fund the removal themselves,” he said.
Gerry Waring of the UDC spoke in defense of the monument.
“We feel a responsibility to not erase the memory of the soldiers and sailors of the Battle of Williamsburg and surrounding areas,” she said.
Other speakers argued for the reinterpretation of the monument in Bicentennial Park with new inscriptions.