Mocs News Reporting the news that matters most to UTC
By Caleb Figgures
RICHMOND, VA (mocsnews.com) – The United States took a momentous turn on Wednesday as the enormous statue of General Robert E. Lee was cut down in Richmond, VA. General Robert E. Lee statue stood tall for several centuries over Virginia’s capital.
The Monument of General Lee was lifted from the ground just before 9 a.m. Construction workers took the time to strap harnesses around the statue of General Lee and his horse and soon brought it down.
The tearing down of the General Lee statue happened to be a latest result, from the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year.
Approximately 130 Confederate statues were cut down. For example, on June 13th 2020 in Richmond, Virginia, the statue of Confederate Jefferson Davis was torn down by protestors over the killing of George Floyd. The Stonewall Jackson Statue later came down on July 1, 2020, in Richmond Virginia as well.
General Robert E. Lee was a Confederate general and a member of the slaveholding aristocracy. During Lee’s life, he became experienced in how to control enslaved people, after his father-in- law passed in 1857. Lee enslaved nearly 200 people within a five-year period.
Sharon Jennings, a African American woman and Richmond native, told the Associated Press about General Lee Statue coming down, “It doesn’t matter what color you are, if you really like history, and you understand this street has been your whole life and you’ve grown up this way, you’re think “ Oh, my God” but when you get older you understand that it does need to come down.”
The 21-foot bronze Statue of General Lee is going to be cut into pieces so it can be easily hauled to an undisclosed Virginia facility until another decision is made about disposition, but the 40-foot pedestal is expected to remain in place until further notice.
