Confederate Statue Removed In Old Town Alexandria

ALEXANDRIA, VA — The controversial Confederate Appomattox statue was removed early Tuesday from its place in Old Town Alexandria by the group that owned it.

The statue, belonging to the Daughters of the Confederacy, was first put up in 1889 at Prince and Washington streets as a tribute to Alexandria's Confederate soldiers.

The statue has been a source of controversy for many years. Aside from serving as a symbol of the city's conflicting racial history, it has also been the site of traffic crashes. The Alexandria City Council voted in 2016 to remove the statue, but lawmakers blocked legislation that would permit the statue's removal .

That state law changed after Gov. Ralph Northam signed a law overturning the prohibition on the removal of Confederate war memorials. The Senate and House bills signed into law would let localities remove, relocate or contextualize the monuments starting July 1. On Tuesday, the statue removal was carried out by the Daughters of the Confederacy.

As civil unrest broke out following the death of George Floyd, a black man in police custody, protesters have targeted Confederate statues. Graffiti appeared on Richmond's Confederate statues during protests, and the Daughters of the Confederacy headquarters was set ablaze.

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Previous efforts to remove statues in Charlottesville caused racial tensions to turn violent. In 2017, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove the statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. But the city was sued, and a state judge issued an injunction permanently preventing the removal of the Lee and Jackson monuments. In August 2017, white nationalists held the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville to oppose removal of the Lee and Jackson statues in the city. White nationalists clashed with counterprotesters, and counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed when a white nationalist drove into a crowd.

Alexandria's local officials have worked to remove other Confederate symbols. The city officially renamed Jefferson Davis Highway (Route 1) as Richmond Highway in early 2019. In 2017, the city removed a picture of Robert E. Lee from City Hall. After the 2015 Charleston church shooting when gunman Dylann Roof was pictured posing with a Confederate flag, the city stopped a tradition of flying the Confederate flag at Washington and Prince streets on Lee's birthday and Confederate Memorial Day.