Monumental Changes on Richmond’s Monument Avenue

Richmond’s marquee thoroughfare had a rough 2020. It was not the coronavirus pandemic that brought drastic changes to Monument Avenue. It was the aftermath of the police brutality death of George Floyd 1,200 miles away in Minneapolis, Minn. Coast-to-coast racial upheaval brought forth, among other things, the removal, sometimes violently, of statues perceived as symbols of White racism and supremacy by many Black Americans (and people of other races too).

Robert E. Lee monument as seen a few years ago

As the Confederate capital during the 1861-1865 American Civil War, Richmond in the 1890s and early 1900s had many many monuments and markers to the lost war and the “Lost Cause” narrative that espouses how the South had noble intentions in fighting for state’s rights while downplaying its efforts to protect slavery. 

Lee monument photographed on April 5, 2021

Down They Go...

We live in tumultuous times- possibly up there among the most difficult periods this nation has ever faced. Since early 2020 the coronavirus pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world, inlcuding more than 132,000 in the U.S.  No end is in sight to this death toll.

Then on May 25 in Minneapolis George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, is killed on the street by a police officer who relentlessly kneeled on his neck for eight minutes, despite Floyd repeatedly saying he could not breathe. Floyd died at the scene.

The resulting protests and riots, many violent with bloodshed, fires and looting, have rocked and disrupted America. Statues of historic Americans linked with slavery and racism (accurately or not in some cases) have been vandalized, toppled, burned and destroyed.

In Charleston the tall statue in Marion Square of John C. Calhoun was recently removed by order of the mayor and City Council.

He may have been South Carolina’s most prominent political figure ever as a 19th century U.S. senator and Vice President. But his pro-slavery stance and the policies he championed to uphold and try to expand slavery have long been controversial and upsetting to Blacks.

I took this photo with my iPhone in January 2018 while sitting in the Starbucks at the Francis Marion Hotel. What I liked about it was how it is “so Charleston” with its images reflecting religion (the “Holy City” with so many church steeples), the city’s rich history represented by the Calhoun monument, and a palmetto tree, which is a state symbol and on the South Carolina flag.