Gen. Robert E. Lee Statue Removed From U.S. Capitol

Workers have removed a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that represented Virginia in the U.S. Capitol, laboring in the wee hours of Monday morning to take the figure out of Statuary Hall.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) had requested the removal over the summer after a commission chartered by the General Assembly decided that a man who fought to uphold slavery was not a fitting symbol for a diverse and modern state.

Lee had stood with George Washington since 1909 as Virginia’s representatives in the Capitol’s honorary hall, where every state gets two statues.

In place of Lee, the state commission has recommended installing a likeness of Barbara Johns, who as a 16-year-old in 1951 protested poor conditions at her all-Black high school in the town of Farmville. Johns’s court case became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down racial segregation in public schools nationwide.