Proposal Seeking Authority To Remove Confederate Statues Fails

by | Dec 12, 2017 | COMMUNITY

Last night, Richmond City Council voted 6-2 against a proposal requesting the General Assembly of Virginia grant the City Council the authority to remove of Confederate memorials on Monument Avenue.

Councilman Michael Jones of the 9th District proposed the measure, inspired in large part by the three deaths in Charlottesville. “I don’t see anyone dying over the Mona Lisa,” he said by phone earlier in the day. “It’s more than just artwork.”

“There’s an African proverb, when lions learn to write, the hunter is no longer a hero. Well, if slaves would have had a pen, the history would be different,” Jones said. He was anticipating some of the arguments that would be raised by people opposing his proposal, which he described as a vote on right versus wrong.

These were themes he returned to in a speech introducing the measure, invoking civil rights and Charlottesville, while proactively addressing opposing views. He noted that he’d been receiving death threats against himself and his children and even angry phone calls from a colleague on Council, which he described as unprofessional and borderline threatening.

“There comes a time when leaders need to step out in front of the polis. The civil rights legislation was not fully supported by many Americans,” Jones said. “When they were erected, it wasn’t simply for artwork, it was for the perpetuation of white supremacy.”

Some Opponents of the Measure

Opponents took turns speaking in three-minute slots, and they cited tourism dollars along with popular support, and many echoed claims of the Lost Cause narrative, a well-known historical myth that re-casts General Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis as heroes pulled into a war they didn’t want to fight – many sought to minimize the role of slavery.

“The Confederate Congress had a Jew and an Indian,” Ron Moore said. He used the two racial slurs to argue that the presence of Judah P. Benjamin and Stand Watie, a Cherokee who formed the Southern Cherokee Nation, meant that the Confederacy couldn’t be racist. Another opponent, Helen Marie Taylor, introduced herself as a 94-year-old with a long history working to preserve Monument Avenue. She first focused on Jones, telling him to be “more grateful” for the monuments, which she says were built to facilitate a better union. After she was reminded that she can’t directly address an individual councilmember, she turned back to Council President Chris Hilbert to compare Jones to an arsonist.

“Suppose I came here and told you that I’m an arsonist, I like to burn things down, but there are laws against it, so I came to you to get the law changed,” Taylor said. “He likes to tear things down, I like to burn things, why should I be discriminated against?”

Another speaker, Ned Ruffing, described the city as a living museum and said he only learned about Gabriel Prosser, who led a failed rebellion to escape slavery, from a stencil someone had done by the Davis Monument.

Earl Brantley spoke in support of the proposal, noting the limitations of the proposal and the history of disenfranchising African-American voters.

“This brother is just asking us to have the dialogue for the community that now has a right to talk that didn’t. So the community that was looked at as a commodity can speak now,” Brantley said, before asking why people opposed the conversation. “Because we can speak now?”

Proponents Line Up To Speak

Many of the 13 proponents echoed similar comments as Jones and Brantley, covering the history of discrimination and oppression in Richmond and beyond, including slavery, Jim Crow, and highway projects that bulldozed African-American neighborhoods.

Rebecca Turner, a historian who works in Richmond, said that museums were the place to learn history. “I do not believe we can contextualize these monuments in any way,” Turner said. She also noted that each of the statues avoided mentioning slavery. “In Latin, the inscription on Davis says that he fought for states rights and the constitution. There already is a movement to change our history, and it’s on those statues.”

Omari Kadaffi, a local activist on housing and food issues, said he was moved to speak by seeing people of color who opposed the proposal.

“I am shocked that they’d be so deluded as to believe the myths,” Kadaffi said, referring to the Lost Cause. “Anyone can go and read the articles of secession filed by each state, and each of those articles mentions slavery. There is no confusion about why they seceded.”

“I cannot explain to a black child why they should be proud of that statue,” LeSean Greene, the next speaker, said. He noted that monuments were meant to inspire. “Do we want our children to look up to them? Do we want our children to aspire to grow up to be people who have slaves?”

Phil Wylato, editor of the Virginia Defender newspaper was supportive, but critical of the measure.

“They perpetuate a myth, a government-sponsored and paid-for myth about one of the most divisive issues that we’ve ever faced as a country,” Wylato said. “I’m in favor, but it’s very mild, it doesn’t even put you on the record as being against the statues.”

Pointing to opponents of the proposal, former City Council member Marty Jewell noted he was friends with some of them.

“They’re not racist people to my knowledge, but they’re misguided people. I’ve read the same textbooks they read in school, which said that black folks liked slavery, that we were ‘a happy lot’.” He spoke on the history of racism in Richmond before urging the Council to vote up the measure.

After public commentary, city council spoke, many citing the Monument Avenue Commission as a reason to delay the vote. Although Council Member Ellen Robertson echoed many of her colleagues on the importance of dialogue, she came out in support of the proposal.

“I want to support Mr. Jones in his courage and determination to move forward, and I also want to set the plate, so that when we do have this conversation, we won’t be like Charlottesville and say we can’t do anything anyway,” Robertson said. Charlottesville voted to remove their statues only to discover that state law prohibited their removal.

“Council President Hilbert said he’d vote no, but used his remarks to criticize the Lost Cause narrative, and tied the building of the statues directly to Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan.

Jones was given one last chance to speak before the vote. Among his comments, he expressed support for the Monument Avenue Commission, too, and described his proposal as part of that support. “If we choose to wait for the Commission, we’ll only be back here again, if they decide to add context or take them down,” he said.

Robertson and Jones voted yes with Vice President Cynthia Newbille abstaining, and all other commissioners voting no.

“We applaud Council Member Robertson for recognizing that this vote would simply give local authority,” Wylato said, outside the meeting. He was skeptical of the other members. “The rest are using the Mayor’s Commission as cover to delay this until, they hope, people don’t feel as strongly about it.”

Reached by phone after the meeting, Jones was disappointed. “I’m shocked that people would seek to leave that authority with the State Assembly,” he said, describing the vote as a procedural and moral failure. “All the other issues they raised, education, housing, they all stem from white supremacy. If you try to compromise with systemic evil, you will be co-opted by it.”

David Streever

David Streever

David Streever was editor of the RVA Mag print quarterly from 2017 until 2018. He's written two cycling books for Falcon and covered the Tour de France and the 2015 UCI Championship in Richmond. He writes about politics, culture, cycling, and pretty much anything else.




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