page_title: Albert Pike Memorial
section_title: Controversy and opposition
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Pike Memorial / History / Controversy and opposition
caption_attribution_description: English: Vandalism to the Statue of Albert Pike following the George Floyd protests.
context_page_description: The Albert Pike Memorial is a public artwork in Washington, D.C. honoring Albert Pike, a senior officer of the Confederate States Army as well as a poet, lawyer, and influential figure in the Scottish Rite of freemasonry. The memorial, which now only includes the base and Goddess of Masonry sculpture, is sited near the corner of 3rd and D Streets NW in the Judiciary Square neighborhood. The memorial's two bronze figures were sculpted by Gaetano Trentanove, an Italian-American artist responsible for another Washington, D.C. sculptural landmark, the Daniel Webster Memorial. The dedication ceremony in 1901 was attended by thousands of Masons who marched in a celebratory parade.
  The memorial is one of 18 Civil War monuments in Washington, D.C., which were collectively listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The memorial is owned and maintained by the National Park Service, a federal agency of the Interior Department. The Pike statue was the only outdoor sculpture in Washington, D.C. honoring a Confederate general. Though Pike was depicted as a Mason, not a soldier, for decades the memorial often stirred controversy.
context_section_description: Pike's memorial has often stirred controversy throughout its history, beginning with the GAR's lobbying efforts against its erection to protesters arguing it honors a traitor and racist. Starting in the 1990s, there was renewed interest in removing the statue.  
  In late 1992, members of the LaRouche movement, including civil rights activist and Lyndon LaRouche's vice presidential candidate James Bevel, began a series of protests demanding the memorial be removed, citing Pike's alleged links with the KKK. During one such event, LaRouche supporters draped Pike's statue with a KKK pointed hat and gown.  Bevel stated: "One way or the other, this statue is coming down. Either the statue will be taken down gracefully or it will be torn down."  
  The protesters sought a congressional resolution to have the statue removed and replaced with a monument inscribed with the Declaration of Independence. Historian and LaRouche activist Anton Chaitkin called the statue a "monument to terrorism" and members of the Council of the District of Columbia petitioned to have the statue removed. 
  Michael Farquhar, a former writer and editor at The Washington Post, called Pike a "blustering blowhard, a feeble poet, a laughable hypocrite, a shameless jingoist, a notoriously insubordinate military officer, and yes, a bigot with genocidal inclinations." John W. Boettjer, then managing editor of the Scottish Rite Journal, wrote a rebuttal op-ed in The Washington Post in defense of the memorial and pointed out that only an Act of Congress could result in the statue's removal. 
  Boettjer stated: "[Pike] received a full pardon from the federal government for his service in the Civil War as a Confederate general. There is not a jot of reliable proof that Albert Pike was ever a member, much less an officer, of the Klan." He also claimed a LaRouche video promised the Middle East conflict would be solved and World War III averted if the statue was removed.  
  The weekly protests by LaRouche supporters continued into 1993. That year Bevel and Chaitkin were convicted of "unlawful statue climbing" and sentenced to one week in jail.
  There was continued criticism of the memorial in the 1990s and 21st century. John F. Doyle, a retired judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, said Pike was responsible for Native American casualties during the Civil War and their subsequent loss of land.  Journalist and author Richard G. Zimmerman called Pike's statue a "poor choice for a pedestal" and said inscriptions on the memorial noting Pike's virtues should include "bigot, indicted traitor, alleged barbarian, suspected plagiarist, jailbird."  
  C. Fred Kleinknecht, then chief executive officer of the Scottish Rite, defended Pike and said the statue was not in honor of his role as a Confederate general, but as an "advocate for Native Americans and his role as a champion of educational and social reform and for his literary accomplishments and scholarship."  Scottish Rite Journal managing editor S. Brent Morris has also defended the memorial and Pike's role as a Confederate officer: "We're not embarrassed in the least that he was a Confederate general...Even in 1901, I don't think the United States Congress would have approved honoring a Confederate general, so he was honored for all his other accomplishments."
  Following the 2017 Unite the Right rally, there was renewed interest in many cities and states to remove Confederate statues and memorials from public land.  The day after the rally, protesters gathered at the Pike memorial and chanted "tear it down", and during another protest, it was vandalized when someone threw red paint on it.  Local government officials, including some members of the council, Attorney General for the District of Columbia Karl Racine, and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, asked the NPS to remove the memorial. In July 2019 Norton introduced House bill H.R. 4135 directing that the statue be removed.
  On June 19, 2020, after weeks of protests in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protesters using rope and chains toppled t
caption: The Pike memorial in 2020 following the George Floyd protests when protesters toppled the statue.
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