NORFOLK – Two years ago, city council members voted to leave the city’s three Civil War monuments in place. On Wednesday evening, hundreds rallied at the base of a Confederate monument, blocks away from where city council meets, calling for its removal.
Just days after Heather Heyer, a 32-year old woman, was killed in Charlottesville at a “Unite the Right” rally, Southside residents took to cobblestone streets chanting, “Take them down!”
It’s not the first time citizens have made the request. In 2015, city council members voted to leave the city’s three monuments in place.
Standing before the crowd in a Captain America costume was James Murray. Why wear a superhero’s outfit to a protest?
“Everyone can rally behind a superhero,” Murray said, holding a shield in front of him and looking toward the crowd. “Especially Captain America. We need him right now.”
Mayor Kenny Alexander sent a letter, given to Southside Daily by a city spokesperson, to his colleagues Wednesday afternoon that said council needed to “re-examine the matter.” Alexander was not in office when the previous decision was made.
Alexander said that if the decision to move the Confederate monument located at the intersection of Main Street and Commercial Place, was made, it should be relocated to a local cemetery.
“It will then remain in a public setting and in a context like that of Fuller’s monument to black Union dead,” Alexander wrote.
James E. Fuller, a Union veteran and city council member himself, raised the funds for a monument located in Norfolk’s West Point Cemetery. The monument honors African American Union soldiers.
City councilperson Andria McClellan, who was not yet on council when the 2015 decision was made, said several residents had contacted her to discuss the fate of the downtown monument since the events in Charlottesville. While some wanted the granite monument destroyed, she said many asked for it to be relocated.
McClellan said she also supports the relocation of the monument at the center of the controversy.
“What concerns me about the monument currently is that it seems to revere a time in our past during which we enslaved our fellow Americans,” McClellan said. “It shouldn’t be highlighted in a downtown area.”
City council is currently on recess and is set to return next Tuesday. While they do not yet have a formal plan to discuss the future of the Confederate memorial, McClellan said they’ll likely start the conversation in coming weeks.
“This is a great opportunity for us to reflect as a city and as a country,” she said. “We’re definitely in a new chapter with what happened in Charlottesville.”
The only problem, McClellan said, is that the city alone does not possess the power to remove the monuments. That authority comes from the General Assembly, she said. McClellan suggested that, in addition to expressing concerns locally, residents should write and call their senators and delegates as well.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe issued a statement on Wednesday, asking each locality to “take down these monuments and relocate them to museums or more appropriate settings.”
“I hope we can all now agree that these symbols are a barrier to progress, inclusion and equality in Virginia and, while the decision may not be mine to make, I believe the path forward is clear,” McAuliffe stated.
With chalk in hand, Melissa Wise attended Wednesday evening’s protest. While speakers took to the microphone, Wise used her chalk to write a message at the base of the granite giant.
“Take it down,” she wrote.
Why?
“It shouldn’t be here,” Wise said. “It’s an abomination.”
Wise told Southside Daily that the city should take the monuments down to eliminate a “rallying point” for “Nazis, white supremacists and the KKK.”
“These monuments are what they’re focusing on,” Wise said. “They’re using it as a rallying cry. If they’re going to rally around a physical object, take it away.
