Over the weekend, there was yet another clash between protesters over a Confederate monument. This time, the monument in question was an equestrian statue of General Robert E. Lee, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. On June 5, the Charlottesville City Council voted to change the name of the park where the statue is located from Lee Park to Emancipation Park, following up on its February decision to remove the statue. It was one block away from this location that two separate protest groups squared off: the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan versus a crowd of counter-protesters calling for the statue’s removal. The clash resulted in 22 arrests, according to the Washington Post.

The controversy over the Lee statue in Charlottesville is only the latest in a string of decisions and incidents relating to the removal of Confederate monuments. Read on to learn which statues have been removed so far and what both sides of the debate are saying.

Charleston Shooting Spurs Confederate Flag Debate

The catalyst for this debate was the 2015 Charleston church shooting, in which 21-year-old Dylann Roof killed nine parishioners of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Upon his arrest, Roof admitted to police that the shooting was meant to start a race war. Roof’s manifesto website and Facebook page were also discovered to contain photos of himself posing with several racist symbols, the most prominent being the Confederate flag.

Following the shooting, protesters took to the South Carolina State House in Columbia to demand the removal of the Confederate flag, which had flown on the state house’s grounds since 1961. Several South Carolina legislators supported the flag’s removal, but the cause only received national attention after police arrested 30-year-old Bree Newsome for climbing the flagpole and removing the flag on June 27, 2015. Two weeks later, the legislation passed and the flag was lowered for the final time.

Thousands gathered to watch the flag-lowering ceremony, but not everyone was celebrating. War reenactor Kenneth Robinson and his fellow “soldiers” held a vigil at the state house to “remember the 650,000 casualties of the Civil War,” he told WRAL. “Nine lives matter,” Robinson said referring to the church shooting victims. “All deaths matter, period.”

Cindy Lampley, another reenactor and a descendant of Confederate soldiers, worried that the flag removal would dishonor her relatives. “I think it’s important that we remember them,” she said. “It’s a sad day for me that my ancestors will no longer see their flag flying next to their memorial.”

Which Monuments Have Been Removed So Far?

The debate over the removal of the state house’s Confederate flag has since branched out to include all monuments and memorials to the Confederacy. As opposition grew, state and local lawmakers began to remove several of the Confederate symbols. Here are some recent examples:

New Orleans

Shortly after the Charleston church shooting, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu called for the removal of four Confederate era monuments. The monuments consisted of three statues of Confederate leaders–Lee, General P.G.T. Beauregard, and President Jefferson Davis–as well as a memorial to the Battle of Liberty Place, an 1874 insurrection by the Crescent City White League.

The New Orleans City Council voted to remove all four monuments in 2014, but it wasn’t until April 2017 that the first of them–the battle memorial–was finally removed. The rest of the statues quickly followed suit, and the final Confederate statue of Lee was removed in May. The city replaced the statues of Lee and Davis with public art and a flag, respectively, but has not disclosed plans for the relocation of the actual monuments.

“These monuments celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for,” Landrieu said as Lee’s statue was hauled away by crane.

Charlottesville

Aside from voting to change the name of Lee Park and remove its statue, the city council also voted 3-2 last February to change the name of Jackson Park (after General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson) to Justice Park. However, the city is running into unexpected legal trouble.

The Monument Fund, the Virginia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans, and other groups filed a lawsuit against the city in June, claiming that renaming the parks would be illegal. Attorneys also claim that the deed in which the park land was granted to the city specifically states that the park cannot be renamed. The court has not filed an injunction preventing the city from renaming the parks, but the Lee statue will remain in place until a hearing begins next month.

Richmond

Mayor Levar Stoney announced on June 25 that he had charged a 10-member commission with finding ways to contextualize the city’s Confederate monuments. The Monument Avenue Commission has set up a website seeking public input to “make recommendations to the mayor’s office on how to best tell the real story of [the] monuments.” There are no concrete plans currently in place.

Stoney went on to say that he does not support the outright removal of the monuments. “I wish these monuments had never been built, but like it or not they are part of our history in this city, and removal will never wash away that stain.”

Baltimore

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the former mayor of Baltimore, ordered the city to put up interpretive signs beside the city’s four Confederate monuments. The decision came with less than three months left in Rawlings-Blake’s term. She admitted that it was a “short-term solution.” The city council had previously recommended that the city remove tributes to Lee and Jackson, along with a statue of Roger B. Taney.

The current mayor, Catherine Pugh, told the Baltimore Sun in May that she is exploring the possibility of removing the monuments altogether.

Mississippi

The Mississippi flag incorporates the Confederate flag in its top left corner. Carlos Moore, a black Mississippi resident, says the flag constitutes “state-sanctioned hate speech,” and has taken his grievance all the way to the Supreme Court. Moore intends to argue that the flag is a symbol of racism and violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection for all citizens. In October, the Supreme Court will decide whether or not to take the case.

In addition, the city of McComb and all eight of Mississippi’s public universities have stopped flying the flag. The University of Mississippi announced last week that it will post signs on campus denoting which buildings were built with slave labor.

Washington, D.C.

While the nation’s capital has not removed any Confederate monuments as of yet, Georgetown University renamed two of its campus buildings in April. The move was meant to atone for the university’s ties to slavery. The original names honored two school presidents who oversaw an 1838 sale of 272 slaves to fund the school. The buildings’ new names honor Isaac Hawkins, the slave whose name appeared first in the bill of sale, and Anne Marie Becraft, a 19th-century black educator. The university is also giving admissions preference to descendants of the 272 slaves. Mary Williams-Wagner, one of Hawkins’ descendants, said that the university needed to take further steps, such as identifying all descendants of the slaves sold by Georgetown.

Other colleges, such as Harvard, Duke, Yale, Princeton, and Brown, have also addressed their links to slavery and racism. Last February, Yale changed the name of one of its residential colleges from Calhoun College to Grace Hopper College, honoring a distinguished alumna and a “trailblazing computer scientist.”

Arguments For and Against Confederate Monuments

Opposers

So why remove the monuments? The clearest answer is that they are offensive. The statues honor men who fought for the institution of slavery. Those in favor of removing them argue that the current U.S. government should not condone such motivations, even passively. Confederate symbols also played a role in the Charleston church shooting, proving that they can still be seen as symbols of black oppression and white supremacy. Many people are wary that they will inspire another massacre. A good portion of the country would be much happier if the statues were placed in museums and battlefield parks, away from public property.

Supporters

The other side of the debate is a little more complicated. There are those, like Robinson and Lampley, who believe that removing the monuments would dishonor the memory of the Confederate soldiers who fought and died for what they believed in. There are others who see the Confederacy as Southern heritage, and believe that removing its symbols would be akin to removing it from history itself. Others are wary of a slippery slope, pointing out that Washington and Jefferson, along with 10 other presidents, owned slaves themselves. What would stop the country from removing the statues of its founding fathers?

Conclusion

Racial tensions in this country are running high these days, and the debate over Confederate monuments fits in to that conversation. The statues represent a different era, with different ideals and different ways of life. While the modern world has made tremendous strides toward diversity and inclusion, some of these ideologies still persist. The two schools of thought will inevitably clash, and as long as the monuments stand, the protests and counter-protests will continue.

As for the subjects of the monuments, one in particular had some relevant remarks on the subject while alive. In an 1869 letter declining an invitation to a public meeting concerning the war, Lee wrote:

I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.

Delaney Cruickshank

Delaney Cruickshank is a Staff Writer at Law Street Media and a Maryland native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in History with minors in Creative Writing and British Studies from the College of Charleston. Contact Delaney at DCruickshank@LawStreetMedia.com.

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After the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) organized a rally over the weekend to protest the removal of a confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, thousands of counter protesters gathered to voice their disgust.

The Charlottesville City Council recently voted to remove a monument of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, but the KKK claims it is part of a sweeping effort to erase white history. The protest was held a block away from Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park, which was recently renamed. But the statue of Lee riding a horse has yet to be removed.

LIVE from #CharlottesvilleKKK rally—#KKK still protesting. HUNDREDS of Counter protestors –very loud @ACLU #Charlottesville pic.twitter.com/QuShCGeehW

— Bo Erickson (@BoKnowsNews) July 8, 2017

City Councilwoman Kristin Szakos wrote in an editorial that the council’s decision was made to join a “growing group of cities around the nation that have decided that they no longer want to give pride of place to tributes to the Confederate Lost Cause erected in the early part of the 20th century.”

A court order has delayed the removal of the statue until a hearing next month that may just be a precursor to an elongated legal battle, according to NPR.

Not only is the town home to the University of Virginia, but it was also the home of American founding father Thomas Jefferson, and is near his Monticello estate.

Sunday’s protests featured about 30 Klansmen, many of whom arrived armed with handguns, and approximately 1,000 counter protesters, according to the Washington Post. The KKK was escorted by police clad in riot gear as they entered and exited.

The fact that the police force, comprised of local, county, state, and university police, protected the Klansmen, left a bad taste in plenty of people’s mouths after seeing police disproportionately use violence to subdue African-American protests.

The KKK is a hate group. Police are keeping them safe. When Black folks protest for our right to life, police harass and harm us. https://t.co/eVv9Vf4e7m

— Negrita (@HustleAndFro_) July 8, 2017

Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer previously urged the town’s residents not to “take the bait — to deny the KKK the confrontation and celebrity they desire,” but thousands still felt compelled to voice their disgust with the group’s resurgence.

While the Klansmen attempted to speak publicly to the crowd at multiple points, they were inaudible and drowned out by the noise made by the counter-protesters. Jalane Schmidt, a professor at the university and a vocal supporter of the removal for Lee’s statue, was among the group gathered at the park. She told the Washington Post:

It is important for me to be here because the Klan was ignored in the 1920s, and they metastasized. They need to know that their ideology is not acceptable…I teach about slavery and African American history, and it’s important to face the Klan and to face the demons of our collective history and our original sin of slavery. We do it on behalf of our ancestors who were terrorized by them.

By the end of the day 22 people had been arrested while three others were hospitalized. Two of the medical issues were due to the heat while the other was alcohol-related, according to the Washington Post.

The Klansmen were members of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Pelham, North Carolina, about 140 miles across the Virginia border. The group was compelled to fight, in their view, the eradication of white history. While most protesting the statue’s removal were part of the KKK, others, like Brandi Fisher, drove hours from neighboring states to join and voice their concerns.

“I don’t agree with everything the Klan believes, but I do believe our history should not be taken away,” said the West Virginia native. “Are we going to remove the Washington and Jefferson memorials because they were slave owners?”

The KKK also staged a protest last month alongside white nationalist leader Richard Spencer in which the group ominously marched with torches to protest the council’s decision. That earlier protest also drew condemnation from citizens and even Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello.

Get your white supremacist hate out of my hometown. https://t.co/KfkxHImvze

— Tom Perriello (@tomperriello) May 13, 2017

Once the protests ended on Sunday afternoon, police escorted the Klansmen out and asked the counter protesters to disperse. After the police decided the remaining crowd was “an unlawful assembly,” the police force donned masks and released gas canisters to disperse the crowd, according to the Washington Post.

Last month the Anti-Defamation League released a comprehensive report on the current presence of the KKK in the United States. According to the research, there are about 3,000 people who strongly identify with Klan ideology and there are 42 active groups across 33 states. The report also states that many of the chapters have joined forces with each other or with neo-Nazi groups in order to show strength and unity. As a result, groups have beliefs ranging from “traditional” white supremacist beliefs to Christian Identity, “a longstanding racist and anti-Semitic religious sect,” according to the ADL Report.

Several white nationalist groups have obtained permits for yet another rally on August 12, so there will likely be more conflicts like these in the future. With racial tensions heightened since the 2016 election, these feuds over confederate monuments are just one example of the conflicts that continue to arise between white nationalists and more progressive communities.

Josh Schmidt

Josh Schmidt is an editorial intern and is a native of the Washington D.C Metropolitan area. He is working towards a degree in multi-platform journalism with a minor in history at nearby University of Maryland. Contact Josh at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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When the city of New Orleans finally began the process of taking down its pro-Confederate monuments this week, it faced some opposition. One of the more high-profile critics of the decision was Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart.

Stewart attracted attention on the internet a few days ago for his tweet-storm defending preservation of the monuments. But there was one controversial tweet in particular that stood out.

Nothing is worse than a Yankee telling a Southerner that his monuments don't matter.

— Corey Stewart (@CoreyStewartVA) April 25, 2017

Twitter users quickly reminded Stewart that he is not from the South (he is a Minnesota native), and that a lot of things are actually worse than “a Yankee telling a Southerner that his monuments don’t matter.”

You are from Minnesota. https://t.co/45pEgVGmC2

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) April 25, 2017

@CoreyStewartVA Like, literally, nothing? Nothing is worse?

— John Legend (@johnlegend) April 25, 2017

you know what was worse? Slavery https://t.co/1ACEuYjUh9

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) April 25, 2017

1. Slavery
2. Lynchings
3. Black women raped + their rapists set free
4. Jim Crow
5. Workplace discrimination
6. Housing discrimination https://t.co/aTgOxwXEqd

— Yashar (@yashar) April 25, 2017

Stewart, who is currently a chairman for the Board of Supervisors in Prince Williams County, Virginia, announced his bid for governor of the state in April 2016 (the primary elections will take place this June). Since then, he has become a vocal advocate for honoring Confederate landmarks, and has integrated the issue heavily into his campaign. In February, he organized protests in Charlottesville, Virginia against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. Earlier this month, he attended a Civil War-themed “Old South Ball.”

For many, Confederate symbols (like the flag) will always represent white supremacy because of their ties to the southern states that seceded from the U.S. and defended slavery during the Civil War. Stewart, on the other hand, has said that his position on the issue is not about the Confederate flag, but about “rampant, uncontrolled political correctness that is shaming Virginians who are simply trying to honor their ancestors, their ancestry, their heritage.”

If that anti-political correctness sentiment sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve heard similar things from President Donald Trump while he was on the campaign trail. Stewart supported Trump during the presidential election and served as the chair of Trump’s campaign in Virginia, until he was fired for orchestrating an unauthorized protest against anti-Trump Republicans outside the Republican National Convention headquarters.

Now, his commitment to protecting Confederate heritage, and combating what he calls “historical vandalism,” could hurt him in his run. Stewart recently lost the support of Prince William County’s sheriff, who switched his endorsement to back Stewart’s Republican opponent Ed Gillespie. Sheriff Glendell Hill told the Washington Post that Stewart’s views on “all that Confederate stuff” were too divisive. Four GOP supervisors who serve on the county board with Stewart also chose to endorse Gillespie.

Like Trump, Stewart is known for being outspoken on the internet. In March, he answered questions on a Reddit thread known as an “Ask Me Anything,” or AMA. At one point in the AMA, Stewart referred to Gillespie as a “cuckservative,” a term coined by the alt-right movement to disparage Republicans who are too moderate. In the same question-and-answer session on the site, he called for deportation of “criminal illegal aliens,” called globalists “BAD people” (even though he has worked as an international trade attorney).

Stewart has also tried to cover up negative information about himself–like low ratings about his claims on the fact-checker Politifact, and his loss in the 2016 race for lieutenant governor–by editing his own Wikipedia page.

From the establishment of sanctuary cities to the legalization of marijuana, a lot of resistance to the Trump Administration and its policies happens on local and state levels. Virginia’s current governor, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, has opposed the president’s immigration order while Democratic candidates for governor like Tom Perriello and Ralph Northam have both criticized and vowed to push back against the federal government. But a win for Stewart could change that.

However, a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Gillespie–who voted for Trump, but whose support of the president has been lukewarm in comparison to Stewart’s–leading with 28 percent, while Stewart is currently falling behind at 12 percent. According to the same poll, in the general election both Perriello and Northham would hold double-digit leads over Gillespie.

Not to mention, Trump’s politics haven’t been very popular in Virginia–he pulled his campaign out of the state weeks before the election, a move that was criticized by Stewart.

Victoria Sheridan

Victoria is an editorial intern at Law Street. She is a senior journalism major and French minor at George Washington University. She’s also an editor at GW’s student newspaper, The Hatchet. In her free time, she is either traveling or planning her next trip abroad. Contact Victoria at VSheridan@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The National Cathedral in Washington D.C. is the latest institution to join the conversation about how to handle its ties with the Confederate flag. Two images of the Confederate flag are featured on its stained-glassed windows, and have been there for nearly 60 years, but discussions on what the church is going to do about them only began a few months ago. The church announced Wednesday that the Confederate flags would be removed, but the timeline concerning their removal and other details of the operation are still a little foggy.

The stained-glass windows commemorate General Stonewall Jackson and General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army, and were installed in 1953, almost a century after the Civil War ended. They were at least partially funded by the Daughters of the Confederacy and a private donor from the North, and according to interim dean of the cathedral Mariann Budde, the images represented “the way the Civil War memory was encoded in American history in the 20th century.”

National Cathedral Will Remove Confederate Flag Stained Glass Windows https://t.co/KzZI7mkq8C

— NPR (@NPR) June 9, 2016

Despite all of the time church officials spend in the cathedral, none of them noticed it until after the Charleston shooting last summer. “That’s when it resurfaced in our consciousness that the Confederate flag was part of our stained-glass artistry,” Budde said.

The previous dean of the cathedral, Rev. Gary Hall, ordered that the windows be taken down. Exactly when the stained-glass windows will be removed is unclear, but Budde confirmed that the Confederate flags will be removed and replaced with plain glass, “as soon as we can do it,” which should not be longer than a few weeks, she said. However, church leadership are not the only ones with the power to decide how to move forward. The cathedral is hosting a series of public forums and events dealing with racism, slavery, and racial reconciliation to get other input and perspectives.

“The Lee-Jackson windows call the question of race and the legacy of slavery, and instead of turning away from that question, the cathedral has decided to lean into it,” said the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, the cathedral’s canon theologian. “Instead of simply taking the windows down and going on with business as usual, the cathedral recognizes that, for now, they provide an opportunity for us to begin to write a new narrative on race and racial justice at the cathedral and perhaps for our nation.”

The cathedral’s announcement to remove and replace the Confederate flags from the stained-glass windows is the most recent in a string of Confederate-related controversy around the country. On Tuesday, Mississippians protested for the removal of the Confederate icon from their state flag. Georgetown is struggling with how to deal with selling 272 slaves to bolster its finances more than a century ago, and last year, South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from the grounds of the Statehouse.

A task force dedicated to examining the status of the Confederate flag on the stained-glass window was assembled a few months ago, and has since recommended that the cathedral also conduct an audit of all the art and iconography on its premises. “Whatever the Chapter’s final decision, ultimately, the windows will not live in the cathedral in the same way they have in the past,” the task force said.

The public forums will begin Sunday, July 17 at 4 p.m. with a panel discussion titled “What the White Church Must Do.”

Inez Nicholson

Inez is an editorial intern at Law Street from Raleigh, NC. She will be a junior at North Carolina State University and is studying political science and communication media. When she’s not in the newsroom, you can find her in the weight room. Contact Inez at INicholson@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Hey y’all!

One hundred fifty-four years ago this week, citizens across the great state of Texas voted by a wide margin to secede from the United States. This vote finalized the state’s intentions of joining the Confederacy in the Civil War. Of course, the state declared the Ordinance of Secession null and void five years later in 1866. But those five years are something that most proud Texans hold on to for dear life. There are even some people in the state who actually think it is something we should do again.

The group Republic of Texas held a Valentine’s Day meeting  that was raided by several different law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the Brazos and Kerr County Sheriffs’ departments, the Texas District Attorney’s office, the Bryan Police Department, and my personal favorite, the Texas Rangers (the law enforcement group, not the baseball team). The meeting was held in Bryan, Texas, about 100 miles northwest of Houston.

I can just imagine Chuck Norris kicking down the doors of a meeting hall where this event took place and these guys getting a what’s what kind of talking to.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Apparently the Republic of Texas group actually believes that Texas was unlawfully annexed in 1845 and should be recognized again as an independent nation. Sure, maybe this seems like a normal day in Texas–Texans sitting around talking about “the good ol’ days” (when none of us was actually alive) and how Texas would do so much better as a country of its own than attached to the whole of the United States. It’s just nuts to think that there are people who are actively seeking legal ways to make this happen.

You must be wondering why this silly group of people was raided on the most romantic holiday of the year. Well, instead of tending to their sweethearts, the group decided it was the right time to “simulate legal process.” They sent a legal summons to a Kerr County judge and banker to appear before the group’s “court” over the foreclosure of a residence belonging to a member of the group.

Wait. What!?! What exactly does a foreclosure have to do with seceding from the union, or anything with the state of Texas? Absolutely nothing.

Kerr County Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer told the Houston Chronicle that this group has had many dealings with the County and City police, “flooding the court with simulated documents.” Also known as wasting the government’s time and killing trees for a lost cause.

Though I was born in Germany I am definitely a fifth-generation Houstonian and I take serious pride in all things Texas, but even I have a hard time truly believing that seceding from the union would be a good idea. Sure, Texas is the greatest state in the country, but I don’t think it would be as great without the rest of the states and the federal government.

Let’s keep talking and dreaming about seceding, but let’s not actually do it. That would just be foolish. Plus, we usually have a Texan in the White House every couple of Presidents, anyway.

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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