page_title: Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials
section_title: Virginia
hierarchical_section_title: Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials / List of removals / Virginia
caption_attribution_description: English: The Robert Edward Lee sculpture in Charlottesville, Virginia, covered in tarp.
context_page_description: Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials is an ongoing process in the United States since the 1960s. Many municipalities in the United States have removed monuments and memorials on public property dedicated to the Confederate States of America, and some, such as Silent Sam in North Carolina, have been torn down by protestors. The momentum to remove Confederate memorials increased dramatically following the high-profile incidents including the Charleston church shooting, the Unite the Right rally, and the killing of George Floyd. The removals have been driven by the belief that the monuments glorify white supremacy, memorialize an unrecognized, treasonous government whose founding principle was the perpetuation of slavery, and that the presence of these Confederate memorials over a hundred years after the subjugation of the Confederacy continues to disenfranchise and alienate African Americans.
  The vast majority of these Confederate monuments were built during the era of Jim Crow laws, from 1877 to 1964. Detractors claim that they were not built as memorials but as a means of intimidating African Americans and reaffirming white supremacy after the Civil War.
context_section_description: Statewide
  Confederate History Month (April) last celebrated in 2000.
  Lee-Jackson Day (January 17) was last celebrated in 2020. On February 6, 2020, Virginia passed legislation ending celebration of Lee-Jackson day: a state holiday commemorating Robert E Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The holiday was replaced with Election Day and signed into law by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam.
  Alexandria
  In 2017, a portrait of Robert E. Lee (born in Alexandria) that hung in the City Council chambers was moved to the Lyceum, a local history museum.
  In 2017, the Vestry of Christ Church (Alexandria) voted unanimously to remove from the sanctuary plaques honoring Washington and Lee, placed there just after Lee's death in 1870, saying they "make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome."
  In 2017, "[a] hotel on King Street removed a plaque that had been bolted to the wall of the building for decades and gave an incomplete account of the first war-related deaths after the Union invaded Alexandria on May 24, 1861. The marker, posted in 1929 by the Sons and Daughters of Confederate Veterans, memorialized the first Southerner killed by the Union, belying the fact that he had first shot and killed a Northern colonel on the property."
  In 2020, the Appomattox statue (1899) was removed. Dedicated to the Confederate dead and placed in the middle of the intersection of Washington and Prince Streets, in 2016 the mayor and city council voted unanimously for it to be moved to a museum. The statue was removed and put into storage in June 2020 by its owners, the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
  Arlington
  Jefferson Davis Highway (U.S. 1) was renamed Richmond Highway in 2019.
  Bailey's Crossroads
  J. E. B. Stuart High School (1958), named for Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart. Following protests by students and alumni that began in June 2015, the school board voted in July 2017 to rename the school as "Justice High" by the beginning of the 2019 school year. The new name took effect July 1, 2018.
  Bowling Green
  Confederate Monument (1906). On August 25, 2020, the Caroline County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to remove the monument.
  Charlottesville
  Lee Park, the setting for an equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee, was renamed Emancipation Park on February 6, 2017. In July 2018 it was renamed again, to Market Street Park.
  On February 6, 2017, the Charlottesville City Council also voted to remove the equestrian statue of Lee. In April, the City Council voted to sell the statue. In May a six-month court injunction staying the removal was issued as a result of legal action by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and others. The prospect of removal, as well as the park renaming, brought numerous white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other alt-right figures to the Unite the Right rally of August 2017, in which there were three fatalities. In June 2016 the pedestal had been spray painted with the words "Black Lives Matter", and overnight between July 7 and 8, 2017, it was vandalized by being daubed in red paint. On August 20, 2017, the City Council unanimously voted to shroud the statue, and that of Stonewall Jackson, in black. The Council "also decided to direct the city manager to take an administrative step that would make it easier to eventually remove the Jackson statue." The statues were covered in black shrouds on August 23, 2017. By order of a judge, the shrouds were removed in February 2018.
  On September 6, 2017, the city council voted to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson from Emancipation Park.
  Jackson Park, named for Stonewall Jackson, was renamed Justice Park. In July 2018, it was renamed a second time, to Court Square Park.
  The University of Virginia Board of Visitors (trustees) voted unanimously to remove two plaques from the university's Rotunda that honored students and alumni who fought and died for the Confederacy in the Civil War. The University also agreed "to acknowledge a $1,000 gift in 1921 from the Ku Klux Klan and contribute the amount, adjusted for inflation, to a suitable cause."
  Doswell
  Major amu
caption: Lee sculpture in Charlottesville, Virginia, covered in black tarp following the Unite the Right rally
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