Richmond mayor creates commission to ‘tell the real story’ of city’s Confederate monuments

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney proposed a compromise Thursday as a dispute over the Virginia capital’s Confederate monuments intensifies with calls for their removal.

“I wish these monuments had never been built, but like it or not they are part of our history in this city, and removal will never wash away that stain,” Mr. Stoney said at a press conference Thursday, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

Instead he’s appointed a 10-member commission tasked with studying ways to add historical context to statutes commemorating the likes of Confederate leaders including Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, among others.

The commission will seek the public’s input and will ultimately “make recommendations to the mayor’s office on how to best tell the real story of our monuments,” including the possible addition of new signs or placards adding context to “set the historical record straight,” Mr. Stoney said.

“Equal parts myth and deception, (the statues) were the ’alternative facts’ of their time — a false narrative etched in stone and bronze more than 100 years ago — not only to lionize the architects and defenders of slavery, but to perpetuate the tyranny and terror of Jim Crow and reassert a new era of white supremacy,” the mayor said.

“It is my belief that without telling the whole story, these monuments have become a default endorsement of that shameful period — one that does a disservice to the principles of racial equality, tolerance and unity we celebrate.”

Richmond is but one of several southern cities currently wrestling with respect to the future of its Confederate tributes, the likes of which critics have accused of celebrating America’s racist ties to slavery. A statue honoring Lee was removed from downtown New Orleans last month along with three others, and five people were arrested at a city council meeting Wednesday in Hollywood, Florida, during a hearing held to discuss several area streets named for Confederate generals.

Little over an hour away from Richmond in Charlottesville, meanwhile, a Ku Klux Klan chapter said it will hold a rally in front of city next month to protest the planned removal of a statue celebrating Lee.