Stonewall Jackson

Richmond Removes Stonewall Jackson Statue From Monument Avenue

The crews carrying a giant crane, electrical tools and electrical tools recovered an imposing statue of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson from a concrete base along the famous Monument Street in Richmond, Virginia, on Wednesday, just hours after the mayor ordered the removal of all Confederate statues from city land.

Mayor Levar Stoney came weeks after Virginia Governor Ralph Northam ordered to remove the most prominent and imposing statue along the way: the statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, located on state land. Lee's statue stopped pending several lawsuits.

The Jackson statue is the most recent number of dozens of Confederate symbols to be removed from public lands in the United States in the five weeks since the death of police to George Floyd sparked a nationwide protest movement.

In most cases, state or local governments have moved to take down antiquities in response to ardent protesters, but in a few cases - including many other Confederate statues in Virginia - the protesters toppled the numbers themselves. Also this week, Mississippi retired the last state flag in the United States that included the emblem of the Confederate battle.

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Confederate statues were erected after decades of civil war, during the Jim Crow era, when states imposed new apartheid laws, and during the "lost cause" movement, when historians and others attempted to portray the southern rebellion as a battle to defend the rights of states rather than slavery. In Richmond, the first major memorial - Lee's statue - was erected in 1890.

Cheering big crowd removing statue

Crews spent several hours Wednesday clinging tightly to the colossal Stonewall Jackson statue and using power tools to separate it from its base. A crowd of several hundred people chanted to watch a gathering and chanted as a crane lifting the general on top of his horse in the air and putting it aside.

Brent Holmes said, He is black. "One down, more to go."

Elie Swan, who has lived in Richmond for 24 years, said he felt "a magical feeling of gratitude" to witness the removal of the statue after he and others spent much time, days and weeks pretending and calling for its removal and others. He said that, as a black man, he found it aggressive to have many statues glorifying Confederate generals for "fighting them."