Barriers placed around Robert E Lee statue as activists target Confederate monuments
Concrete barriers have been erected around a towering statue of civil war general Robert E Lee in Richmond, Virginia, hours after demonstrators tore down a different Confederate monument in the city.
Crews could be seen installing what appeared to be about 3ft tall cement blocks around the statue, which is due to be removed by the end of June, on Wednesday morning.
The statue of Lee, a commander in the Confederate army, has stood on Monument Avenue in Richmond for 130 years and has become a focal point for anti-racism protesters in recent weeks.
A lawsuit has been filed against the statue’s removal, but Richmond’s mayor, Levar Stoney, has said it will be taken down, along with other Confederate monuments in the city.
“Richmond is no longer the capital of the Confederacy,” Stoney said in a statement. “It is filled with diversity and love for all, and we need to demonstrate that.”
The Lee monument, a 12-ton, 21ft high structure depicting the general on his horse, has been targeted by activists, who have daubed the base of the monument with a series of corrective slogans, including “Black Lives Matter” and “stop white supremacy”.
In an apparent retaliation, a statue of the late tennis champion Arthur Ashe, born in Richmond, further along Monument Avenue, was daubed with the words “White lives matter” in the past 24 hours.
The statue to Ashe, the first black tennis player to represent the United States in the Davis Cup, was erected in 1996 as the only statue on Monument Avenue not representing the Confederacy. Police are investigating.
In a statement, the Virginia department of general services said it was erecting the barriers around the Lee monument “to protect the safety of everyone speaking out to make their voices heard as well as the structure itself”.
The move comes after protesters toppled a Confederate statue in Richmond on Tuesday night. The Howitzers monument – a tribute to a Confederate civil war unit – was the third Confederate statue to be torn down in Richmond by protesters in recent weeks. A nearby statue of the explorer and colonizer Christopher Columbus was also ousted.
A group of property owners along Monument Avenue filed a lawsuit on Monday, aiming to prevent Virginia from removing the Lee statue, which the Virginia governor, Ralph Northam, has also pledged to remove.
According to the local 10 News channel, the six plaintiffs argued that they would suffer due to the “the loss of a priceless work of art from their neighborhood and the degradation of the internationally recognized avenue on which they reside”.