Robert E Lee statue defaced as Confederate monument protests grow

The descendants of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson are fine with moving the statues out of public parks.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/stonewall-jackson-descendants-call-monuments-removal-49271678

Lee’s great-great-grandson: “If they choose to take those statues down, fine. Maybe it's appropriate to have them in museums or to put them in some sort of historical context in that regard."

Stonewall Jackson's great-great-grandson Jack Christian: "They were constructed to be markers of white supremacy. They were constructed to make black people fearful. I can only imagine what persons of color who have to walk and drive by those every morning think and feel."

Christian told the AP that he used to be open to the idea that the statues on Richmond's famed Monument Avenue — which memorialize southern Civil War leaders, including Jackson — might be acceptable if context were added to explain why they were built.

However, the racially charged violence in Charlottesville has shown that to be impossible, Christian said.

A descendant of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America, said he supports moving the statues to appropriate settings, such as museums.

Jefferson Davis' great-great-grandson Bertram Hayes-Davis,: "In a public place, if it is offensive and people are taking issue with it, let's move it. Let's put it somewhere where historically it fits with the area around it so you can have people come to see it, who want to understand that history and that individual."

“They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display,” they wrote.

Those statues would have been fine if they're being used as historical context, instead of being seen as martyr shrines - like what happened with the Austrian government's seizure of Adolf Hitler’s birthplace (the building became a shrine to the dictator during WW2, and the Austrian government fears this may happen again).

bass4funkAug. 18  11:11 am JST

The communist fascists are angry and beside themselves because Democrat confederate soldiers owned slaves.

Is anyone dumb enough to believe that those Confederate slave owners would have been Democrats if the Democratic Party had been anything like the party it is today? Or is anyone unaware of how the Democrats lost control of the South, as this... person appears to assume with such grotesquely over-simplified comments that only an idiot would taken them seriously?

@Blacklabel

These statues cant be beautiful pieces of 100 year old art? I have seen some of them, the craftsmanship of the sculptings in some of these are amazing.

sure - let them be art in a museum. they serve zero purpose sitting outside government courthouses etc.

Even Robert E Lee was against erecting Confederate monuments. These idiots who want to claim it's about "Southern Heritage" manage to ignore that Lee didn't think it was a good idea. He wanted the country to "move on".

Unfortunately, today's nincom***p right wingers are too racist even to listen to his words.

The discovery came as President Donald Trump stoked the controversy over the statues, echoing white nationalists by decrying the removal of what he said were "beautiful" monuments to the pro-slavery Confederacy.

Should someone have any doubt DT is a white supremacist.

if theyare white and owned slaves they are numbered in days. washington DC name change is coming!

These statues cant be beautiful pieces of 100 year old art? I have seen some of them, the craftsmanship of the sculptings in some of these are amazing.

The Lenin statue in Fremont, WA is obviously a 'work of art' and not an actual monument of or about Lenin himself. So it can be exempted from removal, according to liberals. Talk about having it both ways. Things you like are art and protected, but things you dont like are not.

"When you start wiping out your history; sanitizing your history to make you feel better? It’s a bad thing.”

Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.

Amazing! The communist fascists are angry and beside themselves because Democrat confederate soldiers owned slaves. These people are all over the place. They should be out with pitch forks and torches and show up on every Democrats door.