On September 8, a confederate statue that stood tall in Richmond, Virginia was removed from its platform to erase the racist history physically represented by the Gen. Robert E. Lee statue.
The 21-foot statue was taken down after a year of legal conflict that led to the removal of the largest Confederate memorial statue in the United States. Richmond, Virginia used to be the Confederacy’s capital and soon became a major city after the Confederate party moved their government to the southern state’s largest city.
The statue features Robert E. Lee riding a horse in the middle of the historic courtyard located at Robert E. Lee Memorial. The monument that stood on top of the courtyard’s pedestal was removed in a single hour and just like this the offensive symbolic nature of the statue has disappeared.
Now, a Richmond-based artist is going to create a time capsule and place it somewhere within the courtyard’s grounds to solidify a new chapter for the city in Virginia.
Local sculptor, Paul DiPasquale will be implementing the new time capsule and removing the old capsule that had Confederate artifacts within it. This is to honor the shift in political beliefs and racial equity compared to when this statue was installed in the late 1800s.
On Monument Avenue, there used to be large structures that displayed the Confederacy’s efforts in the American Civil War, which is the party that sought after African American’s becoming enslaved and remaining in indentured servitude roles.
The city of Richmond, Virginia has vast industrial factories that are used for manufacturing goods and back in the 1800s, these factories were used to mold iron into bullets and military transportation for the Civil War.
These war materials were used to promote racist ideologies and infrastructures that would hinder the African American population in the US. Now, the state of Virginia is reclaiming its prejudiced past by taking down landmarks that don’t reflect modern times in society and the current political climate of the United States.
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