Mayor: Keep Confederate statues, but add context

The towering Confederate monuments in Virginia’s capital city shouldn’t be taken down, but instead should be supplemented with historical context about why they were built, Richmond’s mayor said Thursday.

“Whether we like it or not, they are part of our history of this city, and removal would never wash away that stain,” Mayor Levar Stoney said.

Instead, a commission of historians, authors and community leaders will solicit public input and make suggestions about how to “set the historical record straight” on the monuments in the former capital of the Confederacy, he announced at a news conference.

“Equal parts myth and deception, they were the ‘alternative facts’ of their time — a false narrative etched in stone and bronze more than 100 years ago — not only to lionize the architects and defenders of slavery, but to perpetuate the tyranny and terror of Jim Crow and reassert a new era of white supremacy,” the mayor said.

Stoney’s announcement comes as many cities across the South engage in bitter debates over Confederate symbols, prompted in part by the 2015 shooting of nine black worshippers at a Charleston, South Carolina, church by an avowed white supremacist. Opponents say the monuments are offensive relics of the region’s racist past, while supporters call them a part of history that should be preserved.

Richmond’s five Confederate statues are prominent fixtures on Monument Avenue, a wide thoroughfare lined with churches and historic mansions considered by many to be the city’s most prestigious address and one of the nation’s loveliest thoroughfares. Likenesses of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, President Jefferson Davis and oceanographer Matthew Maury are perched on large stone pedestals.

Stoney, who is AfricanAmerican, took office in December as the youngest mayor ever elected in Richmond. Before that, he worked for Gov. Terry McAuliffe as Secretary of the Commonwealth, a cabinet position with duties including processing the restoration of voting and civil rights for felons.