United States: the city of Richmond debunks the statue of a former southern general

Teams are working to remove one of the largest remaining monuments in Confederation Country, a towering statue of General Robert Lee on September 8, 2021, in Richmond, Virginia.

AP - Steve Helber

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

She had become a symbol, like other statues of Southern figures, of the struggle for the rights of black Americans.

A monument, one of the most imposing in the country, to the glory of General Lee, military chief of the armies of the South, was dismantled this Wednesday in Richmond, in the state of Virginia.

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With our correspondent in Washington,

Guillaume Naudin

Cries of joy, applause and slogans greet the dismantling of a

highly controversial statue

.

It took less than an hour to unbolt the 12-ton sculpture of General Lee, leader of the Southern armies during the Civil War.

Less than an hour, but a year of legal battle to bring down this monument in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederation and still the capital of Virginia.

But Virginia has changed.

This is the message from Democratic Governor Ralph Northam.

And that's what the State Supreme Court confirmed last week when it authorized the dismantling.

The statue was then placed on the ground before being cut into several pieces, then stored before deciding what to do with it.

Widely covered in graffiti after the demonstrations of the

Black Lives Matter

movement

that followed the

death of George Floyd

in Minneapolis, the enormous pedestal will remain as a symbol of struggle and victory for civil rights and rights activists blacks.

After several years of tensions focused on the slavery past of the United States, the most important monument denounced as a racist symbol in the country was debunked today in Virginia: the gigantic statue of General Lee, the former commander of the Southerners # AFP pic.twitter.com/zsQQ2L5WJN

- Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) September 8, 2021

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