Richmond, Virginia, continued to take down the city’s Confederate memorials Thursday after the mayor’s office announced it expected to have all of the monument removed by the end of the week.
Work crews finished dismantling a monument to Matthew Fontaine Maury by removing a massive globe that sat for nearly a century beneath a statue of the Confederate naval commander.
Crews subsequently moved to nearby Monroe Park where they quickly removed a statue of Joseph Bryan and a memorial to Confederate Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, Richmond’s WRIC reported.
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, a Democrat, ordered the city’s Confederate monuments removed on July 1 upon a new state law taking effect that allows localities to decide their fate.
Several monuments to the former Confederacy and its leaders have come down in the days since, and the mayor’s office told The Washington Times the rest would be removed this week.
The monument to Maury was unveiled in 1929, and the statue that had sat atop the bronze globe during the decades since was one of several Confederate monuments removed last week.
Among the other monuments to come down recently were long-standing tributes to Confederate Gens. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart, who each fought against the U.S. in the American Civil War, as well as the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument and a massive tribute to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy during the war.
Bryan, a Richmond businessman, and Lee, a future governor of Virginia, each served in the Confederate Army. Their memorials were unveiled in 1911 and 1955, respectively.
Mr. Stoney said last week that Richmond planned to take down a total of 11 monuments to the former Confederacy.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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