The John Lewis Tribute Task Force announced Thursday that Jamaican sculptor Basil Watson would create a sculpture to honor the late Democratic congressman; the sculpture of the civil rights leader will stand outside the historic Decatur courthouse where a Confederate monument once stood.
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At least 160 Confederate symbols including statues were removed from public spaces following the death of George Floyd in 2020, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Of the symbols removed 94 were Confederate monuments, including a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that was removed from the U.S. Capitol building after 111 years, according to Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) data. The left-leaning SPLC keeps track of around 2,100 public parks, buildings and statues devoted to the Confederacy through a database called “Whose Heritage?”
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Republican lawmakers in Georgia appear ready to cave and work with Democrats on the removal of yet another Confederate statue.
“The state legislative effort to remove the figure of Alexander Stephens from the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol and replace it with a likeness of the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis will begin in earnest on Wednesday with a bipartisan resolution promoting the change,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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Virginia Military Institute began tearing down a statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson Monday morning after school leadership approved the removal in October.
Virginia Military Institute’s (VMI) Board of Visitors unanimously approved Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson statue’s removal in October after the school was accused of systemic racism and of fostering a hostile environment for black cadets. An Oct. 17 Washington Post report laid out several accusations of racism and insensitivity at VMI.
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Amid plague, national lockdown, riot and arson, iconoclasm, recession, and the most contested voting in history, the country leaves 2020 with some scars that won’t heal.
Mail-in Voting: Election Day as we once knew it no longer really exists. It has been warped, trimmed, and made nearly irrelevant in the panic of the times. The prior, but now accelerating, changes and the “never let a good crisis go to waste” efforts during the COVID-19 lockdown rammed through vast changes in previous voting norms. If the Democrats win the two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia, new federal voting mandates designed to supersede state laws will institutionalize the chaos.
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Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney has won another term in office with 38.07 percent of voters, just ahead of the 35.72 percent of voters he won in 2016, according to data from the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) and the City of Richmond. That upper-30s range is also the percent of support the mayor had in recent 2020 polls. In his first term, the mayor faced challenges including poor graduation rates in Richmond schools, controversy over his coliseum project, COVID-19 health and economic concerns, and questions of racial equity around policing and Confederate monuments. Those issues still face the mayor as he enters a second term.
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Residents of six rural Virginia counties voted to keep local Confederate monuments in place on Tuesday. The referenda are non-binding, but demonstrate voter preference to the local boards of supervisors. In four of the counties, over 70 percent of voters chose to keep the monuments, according to the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP). Two counties were closer; Charles City County voted against removing its monument by 55.11 percent, while Halifax County voted against relocating its monument by 59.69 percent.
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Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) faces a lawsuit for falsely denying the existence of records documenting the $83,000 removal of the Capitol’s Confederate monuments.
The plaintiff in the case, David Webster II, requested documents under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from Filler-Corn upon learning she’d removed the Confederate statues and busts. In her response, Filler-Corn states repeatedly “The requested records do not exist.” However, Webster II discovered many of the documents in question.
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University of Virginia President Jim Ryan announced that the school will contextualize a monument to its founder Thomas Jefferson. Ryan said the move is part of a broad effort to make the university both “great and good.”
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Mayoral candidate Kim Gray is running to increase transparency in Richmond’s government, return to a community-based planning model, and improve Richmond’s schools. Her resume includes jobs for two former governors, eight years as a school board member, and four years as council member of Richmond’s Second District. Her political roots run to her childhood.
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