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Yonnie3

(18,086 posts)
Thu Oct 26, 2023, 03:12 PM Oct 2023

Charlottesville's Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace

Last edited Tue Oct 31, 2023, 07:28 PM - Edit history (2)

Washington Post

Charlottesville’s Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace

Melted down in secret, the divisive Confederate monument will be turned into a new piece of public art

By Teo Armus and
Hadley Green
Oct. 26 at 3:00 p.m.

SOMEWHERE IN THE U.S. SOUTH — It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too.

So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.

Six years ago, groups with ties to the Confederacy had sued to stop the monument from being taken down. Torch-bearing white nationalists descended on the Virginia college town to protest its removal, and one man drove his car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others.

The statue’s defenders more recently sought to block the city from handing over Lee to the Charlottesville’s Black history museum, which had proposed a plan to repurpose the metal. In a lawsuit, those plaintiffs suggested the monument should remain intact or be turned into Civil War cannons. But on Saturday the museum went ahead with its plan in secret at this small Southern foundry, in a town and state The Washington Post agreed not to name because of participants’ fears of violence.

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https://wapo.st/40sfjWh
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Charlottesville's Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace (Original Post) Yonnie3 Oct 2023 OP
Good IronLionZion Oct 2023 #1
Robert E. Lee would approve of this Jilly_in_VA Oct 2023 #2
and a word from our sponsor Yonnie3 Oct 2023 #3

IronLionZion

(46,904 posts)
1. Good
Thu Oct 26, 2023, 03:46 PM
Oct 2023

Here in Arlington they renamed Lee highway to Langston Blvd. And of course his plantation is Arlington National Cemetery. I never saw any point in honoring a person who lost a civil war, and was a pretty bad plantation owner who had a slave revolt and several slaves escaped.

Yonnie3

(18,086 posts)
3. and a word from our sponsor
Thu Oct 26, 2023, 07:28 PM
Oct 2023



Swords Into Plowshares Charlottesville
@sipcville

📣 Exciting News! We've melted the Lee statue! We went quiet while we dealt w/ legal challenges from Confederate sympathizers. Now we're moving onto the next phase, turning these bronze ingots into new art for our community.
Be part of our mission. Donate: http://sipcville.com/donate


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