A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has represented Virginia in the U.S. Capitol for 111 years has been removed, to be replaced with one of civil rights pioneer Barbara Johns.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement today that workers removed the statue from the National Statuary Hall Collection this morning.
Northam had requested the removal and a state commission decided that Lee was not a fitting symbol for the state.
Lee’s statue had stood with George Washington’s statue since 1909 as Virginia’s representatives in the Capitol’s statuary collection.
Every state gets two statues.
The state commission has recommended replacing Lee’s statue with a statue of Barbara Johns.
She protested conditions at her all-black high school in the town of Farmville in 1951.
Her court case became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ruling had struck down racial segregation in public schools.
Confederate monuments have reemerged as a national flash point since the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes.
Protesters decrying racism have targeted Confederate monuments in multiple cities, and some have been taken down.
President Trump has maintained that the statues should remain.
He’s expected to veto the National Defense Authorization Act sometime this week because it doesn’t modify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which Trump argues gives ‘Big Tech’ too much legal cover.
But he’s also complained that the bill contains a provision that would begin removing Confederate names from military bases.
One of the bases is named after Lee.
During the racial upheavel in Charlottesville in 2017, Trump praised Lee.
Sitting at Union General Ulysses Grant’s old conference table, Trump told a group of advisers that Lee was ‘the greatest strategic military mind perhaps ever.’
He also praised Confederate general Stonewell Jackson
Grant was the commanding general of the Union army, which fought against Lee and Jackson during the Civil War.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made a similar point when she railed against the plan to change the names of bases named for Confederate figures.
Trump’s position has been countered by Democrats.
‘The Confederacy is a symbol of Virginia´s racist and divisive history, and it is past time we tell our story with images of perseverance, diversity, and inclusion,’ Northam, a Democrat, said in a statement.
He added: ‘I look forward to seeing a trailblazing young woman of color represent Virginia in the U.S. Capitol, where visitors will learn about Barbara Johns’ contributions to America and be empowered to create positive change in their communities just like she did.’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also hailed the removal, saying in a statement there ‘is no room for celebrating the bigotry of the Confederacy in the Capitol or any other place of honor in our country.’
During her first term as speaker, Pelosi ordered Lee’s statue to be moved from National Statuary Hall to the Capitol crypt, a place she believed was more fitting.
The presence of statues of generals and other figures of the Confederacy in Capitol locations such as Statuary Hall – the original House chamber – has been offensive to African American lawmakers for many years.
Jefferson Davis, a former U.S. senator from Mississippi who was president of the Confederate States of America, is represented by one of two statues from that state.
Pelosi, a Democrat from California, noted in June that Davis and Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, whose statue comes from Georgia, ‘were charged with treason against the United States.’