Richmond committee recommends removal of Confederate president statue

A Richmond, Va., committee on Monday recommended that the city remove a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, but keep other Confederate monuments in place, including one of Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The Associated Press reported that the committee — comprised of local officials, historians and academics — also called for historical context to be added to the existing statues, and to add new monuments that are “more inclusive” of Richmond’s history.

The city served as the capital of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

The report, totaling more than 100 pages, states that the Davis statue should be removed because it “is the most unabashedly Lost Cause in its design and sentiment.”

{mosads}

“In the course of the work, it became abundantly clear the majority of the public acknowledges Monument Avenue cannot and should not remain exactly as it is. Change is needed and desired,” the report reads. 

The panel spent nearly a year studying the statues on Richmond’s famous Monument Avenue, after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

The August rally, which broke into violence, was held in defense of a monument of Lee. Cities and towns across the country removed Confederate monuments in the wake of the rally.

“Nowhere in the United States is a frank and constructive dialogue more necessary or fraught with potential controversy than here in Virginia, home to two Confederate capitals and 136 monuments to the Confederate States of America,” the report states.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney (D) last year called the statues “shameful” relics of the past “that we all disagree with.”