Saturday, July 10, 2021

Emancipating Emancipation Park

It was almost three years ago this week that I wrote about Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Robert E. Lee statue that was still there, surrounded by orange fencing.

Well, today was the day that the city finally removed the statue — which was erected in 1924 during a peak time of obvious KKK activity — and one of Stonewall Jackson, too, that was elsewhere. 

Photo by Bruce Holsinger (from Twitter)

They didn't remove the thing in the dark of night, either, as I had predicted: Lots of people were on hand to see it happen this morning.

A young woman named Zyahna Bryant started the 2016 petition that led to this moment.


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