‘A long time coming’: Lee monument to be removed

RICHMOND, Va. — David Harris Jr., a nephew of humanitarian and tennis legend Arthur Ashe, tried for decades to get a street named after his uncle in Richmond, the hometown that once denied Ashe access to segregated public tennis courts.

Finally, in 2019, the city council approved the renaming over the objections of some residents. So it was gratifying, Harris said, to see Virginia’s governor announce plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee after days of protests over the death of George Floyd.

“My hat is off to them for getting this done,” Harris said Friday. “It took me 25 years to get the street name changed.”

In recent days, amid an extraordinary outpouring of grief over Floyd’s death, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has pledged to remove the Lee statue, while city leaders have also committed to taking down the other four Confederate memorials along Richmond’s prestigious Monument Avenue. The changes amount to a reshaping of how one of America’s most historic cities tells its story in its public spaces — and a rethinking of whom it glorifies.

“It’s been a long time coming. … We’ve tried marches, petitions, protests, going to city council” to get the Confederate monuments removed, said Phil Wilayto, a longtime community organizer and activist with the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. “And it took what is in effect a mass uprising of the community to say these things are not acceptable.”

Republican lawmakers, Confederate heritage groups and a Monument Avenue preservation group have criticized the decisions.

Some have warned it could impact tourism, and many have equated the monuments’ removal to erasing history. “Attempts to eradicate instead of contextualizing history invariably fail,” Senate GOP leaders said in a statement.