Statue of Robert E. Lee removed from Dallas park now on display at golf course

A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that the city of Dallas removed from a public park is now on display at a golf course in West Texas, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The statue, a 1935 sculpture created by Alexander Phimister Proctor, now sits at the Lajitas Golf Resort in Terlingua, Texas. 

The resort, which is owned by local billionaire pipeline mogul Kelcy Warren and managed by WSB Resorts and Clubs President Scott Beasley, received the statute through a donation in 2019, according to The Associated Press.

The statute depicts the Confederate general and another soldier on horseback. It was kept in a Dallas storage unit until it was sold at auction for $1.4 million in 2019, according to The Dallas Morning News. 

Terlingua, which is near the Big Bend National Park and the Rio Grande, has less than 100 residents, none of whom are Black, according to recent census data. 

Beasley told the Chronicle the statute is up just to preserve “a fabulous piece of art.”

“I would say that of the 60-plus thousand guests we host each year, we’ve had one or two negative comments,” Beasley said. “I’d bet that 80 to 90 percent of the people that come to the resort take a picture of it.”

The statue was removed from the Dallas park in September 2017 amid the fallout over the racial violence in Charlottesville, Va., a month prior. 

Black Lives Matter activist Brandon Mack questioned Beasley’s defense of a statue that celebrates the oppression of Black people. 

“We don’t glorify the swastika; we don’t have monuments (of) Adolf Hitler,” Mack said, according to the AP.