An official report is urging major changes to Monument Avenue in Richmond, which features five statues of Confederate leaders

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A commission studying what to do with prominent Confederate monuments in Richmond, Virginia, has recommended removing one that honors Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. It also said permanent signage with historical context should be erected near other statues.

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Richmond, the state capital, was the second capital of the Confederate States of America, after Montgomery, Alabama. Monument Avenue, a prestigious residential street, has five soaring Confederate statues.

The first, of the general Robert E Lee, was erected in 1890. The other statues – to Davis, the cavalry commander Jeb Stuart, the general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and the naval commander Matthew Fontaine Maury – were raised in the early 20th century.

A statue of the African American tennis player Arthur Ashe, a Richmond native, was added in 1996, provoking a nationally publicized and racially charged dispute.

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The Davis statue, the commission said, “is the most unabashedly Lost Cause in its design and sentiment” and should be removed, pending litigation or changes in state law.

“Lost Cause” refers to a view of history, long prevalent in southern states, which minimises the role of slavery in causing the American civil war, which was fought between 1861 and 1865 and through which slavery was abolished in the US.

An inscription on the Davis monument “styles the Confederate president as a ‘Defender of the Rights of States’”, the report noted.



The panel was made up of historians, local officials and others and spent about a year studying and soliciting public input. In a report of more than 100 pages, it said city leaders should consider adding new monuments that would reflect a “more inclusive” story.

“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 said.

A Virginia state law, which the Republican-controlled general assembly has shown no appetite for changing, prohibits local governments or others from “disturbing or interfering with” memorials to war veterans.

The statute is at the center of a lawsuit playing out in Charlottesville over the effort to remove two Confederate statues in the aftermath of violent white nationalist demonstrations last August during which a counter-protester was killed.

Those events and others in recent years, including the shooting dead of eight black churchgoers in Charleston in 2015, have prompted a national push for the removal of monuments and other symbols of the Confederacy, including the Confederate battle flag. Many cities, prominent among them New Orleans, have removed such statues from view.

The Richmond report is not legally binding. Mayor Levar Stoney said in a statement he would study its recommendations further, though he said he agreed with the report’s finding that “something needs to change”.

“Richmond has a long, complex and conflicted history and the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue represent a shameful part of our past,” Stoney said.

“As I have said before, the statues on this beautiful street are Lost Cause myth and deception masquerading as history. They are monuments to Jim Crow [segregation laws] that do not reflect the qualities of inclusivity, tolerance and equality we celebrate as values in our city today.”

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When Stoney announced the commission, he said the statues should be supplemented with historical context about why they were built. After the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, he expanded the panel’s mandate.

Many other US cities moved more quickly. Four monuments were hauled away in Baltimore – in Maryland, a border state that stayed in the union – days after the Charlottesville rally.

In Memphis, Tennessee, city leaders used a legal loophole to get around a law protecting memorials by selling the parks where three statues to Confederate leaders stood. A not-for-profit removed the monuments, under the cover of darkness.

In Kentucky, a panel formed in Louisville released a report on Saturday saying public displays honoring the Confederacy were unwelcome.

The Richmond report suggested that part of the Davis monument could be relocated to his grave at Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery.