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Confederate Memorial, a monument situated at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia is soon to be removed over GOP objections. It will be stored in a secure facility at the Department of Defense before being moved to its new location. The final placement for the statue is yet to be announced.
Over 40 Congressional Republicans urged the Department of Defense to prevent its removal. They said removing the monument can risk disparaging the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. But the descendants of the sculptor, Moses Jacob Ezekiel have sided with moving the statue to a museum.
They said the statue was created to “rewrite history”. In a 2017 letter to the Washington Post, the family wrote:
“It glorifies the fight to own human beings, and, in its portrayal of African Americans, implies their collusion. Take it out of its honored spot in Arlington National Cemetery and put it in a museum that makes clear its oppressive history.”
According to an update on the Arlington National Cemetery’s website, the memorial will be removed on Friday, December 22. The site added:
"During the deconstruction, the area around the Memorial will be protected to ensure no impact to the surrounding landscape and grave markers and to ensure the safety of visitors in and around the vicinity of the deconstruction.”
A peek into the Confederate Memorial's history ahead of its removal
The Confederate Memorial was built to commemorate the Confederate soldiers who lost their lives during the Civil War. It was first displayed to the public in 1914. On Arlington Cemetery’s website, the monument’s description reads:
“The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”
The statue shows a woman made of bronze, standing on top of a 32-foot-tall pedestal. The woman wears a crown ornamented with olive leaves while she holds a laurel wreath and a pruning hook. A Biblical inscription is carved at her feet that reads:
“They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
On one side of the sculpture, an enslaved “Mammy” is shown. Mammy refers to a female slave who is typically portrayed as grateful and happy to be serving their masters while holding a white officer's infant. Among the other figures on the monument, a Black man is depicted following his master’s car.
A federal judge has temporarily barred the removal of the Confederate Memorial
A group named Defend Arlington filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense and sought a restraining order against the Confederate Memorial’s removal. On Monday, December 18, District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. issued a temporary restraining order, barring the removal. The order will expire on Wednesday at 5 p.m., following an expected hearing that morning.
The lawsuit alleged the U.S. Army, which supervises the Arlington Cemetery, violated regulations when they sought a hasty removal of the statue. Last Friday, the cemetery said it expected to get done with the removal.
Lawyers hired by Defend Arlington wrote in the complaint the removal would obstruct the memorial’s eligibility to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The removal process had already begun Monday morning before the latest ruling by the federal judge. However, the Confederate Memorial will now be kept on the cemetery ground until the hearing on Wednesday.
