Lawsuit Halts 'Unite The Right' Lee Statue From Being Melted Down

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — Efforts to preserve a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee are continuing in Charlottesville nearly five years after a hodgepodge of right-wing groups converged on the city to protest the removal of the statue, leading to mayhem and murder.

In the latest chapter of the ongoing saga, two groups — the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation — filed a lawsuit in December to prevent the Lee statue, which was removed from its pedestal in Charlottesville in July 2021, from being melted down.

The two groups want the court to issue a permanent injunction that would force the city of Charlottesville to pay to restore and repair the Lee statue to its original state as a sculpture. If it cannot be repaired and restored, parts of the statue should be repurposed into a Civil War cannon that will be donated to display on a Civil War battlefield, according to the groups.

The city of Charlottesville already voted in December to donate the Lee statue to the only local bidder: the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, a Black-led museum in the city that proposed repurposing the metal entirely.

Since December, the monument has been cut into pieces by the museum, according to a Washington Post report. The museum now plans to melt down the metal and turn it into a new piece of public artwork.

But the museum has been told it cannot melt down the statue because of the lawsuit filed by the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation, two groups connected to the Monument Fund, a Charlottesville group that fought to prevent the city of Charlottesville from removing the statue, The Washington Post reported.

READ ALSO: Charlottesville Removes Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson Statues

When city lawmakers first voted in 2017 to take down the Confederate general from his downtown pedestal, a group of local residents associated with the Monument Fund filed a lawsuit, citing a state law passed in 1997 that prohibited localities from removing Confederate war memorials.

The two groups in the current court case cited the same law, even though the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in the first lawsuit that the statute applied only to monuments erected after the 1997 law was adopted.

The Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation accused the city of Charlottesville of trying to erase Confederate history, WTOP reported Monday.

Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the new owner of the statue, told The Washington Post that the lawsuit filed by the pro-Robert E. Lee statue groups was similar to a neighbor trying to stop her from cutting down a tree in her back yard.

“It’s my tree,” she said. “I have the right to chop it down.”