In September of this year, after more than a year of protest and legal struggles, workers in Richmond, Virginia, took down the towering 19th-century statue of Robert E. Lee, the last of six controversial Confederate memorials to be removed from the city’s Monument Avenue.
The Residents who live near the site where the statue was removed, filed a petition Wednesday, arguing then-Gov. Ralph Northam did not have the proper authority to revoke an agreement to keep the statue erected on state-owned land.
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An attorney for the petitioners, Patrick McSweeney, stated the impact of the statue's removal order "will be widespread and significant."
“If this Virginia decision is followed, every contract entered into by a state government can be abrogated when a governor or a court — not the legislature — decides that the contract violates public policy. This would leave those who contract with state governments at the mercy of judges and executive or administrative officials who have no legitimate role in setting the Commonwealth’s public policy,” the petition reads.
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Virginia vowed to forever maintain the statue, according to the 1887 and 1890 deeds that transferred its ownership to the state, but state Supreme Court justices asserted the obligation no longer applies, siding with Northam last year. The statue was ultimately removed from Monument Avenue in September. “Those restrictive covenants are unenforceable as contrary to public policy and for being unreasonable because their effect is to compel government speech, by forcing the Commonwealth to express, in perpetuity, a message with which it now disagrees,” the justices wrote.
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The unanimous ruling by the state justices cited testimony from historians who noted the statue was erected in 1890 to honor pre-Civil War Southern values that relied on the subjugation of Black people as slaves.
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Northam pushed to remove the statue in June 2020 following the peak of unrest during Black Lives Matter protests over the police killing of George Floyd. Protesters also defaced the statute's base with slogans voicing opposition to racism.
A deal is presently pending approval from the Richmond City Council to send the statue to Virginia's Black History Museum and Cultural Center. It has not yet become clear whether the U.S. Supreme Court would decide to take up the case.
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A time capsule dating to 1887 was subsequently discovered in the now-removed statue’s pedestal—and on Wednesday, following five hours of delicate work by historic preservation experts, the lead box was pried open, revealing a curious assortment of artifacts.
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According to the Associated Press, the items preserved in the 134-year-old capsule were a British silver coin, an 1875 almanac, three books, and a cloth envelope. A letter and a photograph of James Netherwood, a stonemason who worked on the statue’s pedestal, was also uncovered, reports Eduardo Medina for the New York Times.
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