The statue of the commander-in-chief of the southern army during the American Civil War (1861-1865), General Robert Lee, in the Capitol building was dismantled. On Monday, December 21, Reuters reports.
A sculpture of black civil rights activist Barbara Rose Jones is expected to appear in its place. She is best known for leading a strike against racial segregation in Virginia at the age of 16 in 1951. The protest prompted the 1954 US Supreme Court to declare segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
In June, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to the Joint Library Committee calling for the dismantling of 11 Confederate statues in the Capitol building. In her opinion, the sculptures in the Congress building should embody the highest ideals of Americans, and the current ones only offend them.
At the end of May, in the wake of mass protests against police brutality, caused by the death of African American George Floyd during his arrest, a new wave of struggle against monuments to the Confederates began in the United States.
For example, in June, demonstrators demolished a statue of Confederate General of the Army Albert Pike in the North Carolina capital of Raleigh. It was also reported that protesters removed a bust of slave-owner John McDonough in New Orleans. In addition, activists in Richmond brought down a monument to Christopher Columbus, accusing the discoverer of the mainland of genocide of the native population of America.