After the monuments in Richmond: What Richmond's historic Monument Avenue looks like now
“BLM” and “Take It Down” written in paint surround the site where the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Memorial statue formerly stood at Libby Hill Park in Richmond.
An aerial photo shows the site where The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Memorial statue was removed, at Libby Hill Park in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday, May 17, 2022.
Brent Loverde of Richmond walks with his dogs, Ruger and Ruby, near the site where The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Memorial statue once stood at Libby Hill Park in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday, May 17, 2022.
Above, a photo taken by drone shows Monument Avenue without the massive Robert E. Lee monument. After its removal, the statue was conveyed to the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia.
A May 17 aerial view shows Monument Avenue’s circle without the Robert E. Lee statue that stood for 131 years.
With the statue of Confederate army Gen. J.E.B. Stuart now gone, the place on Monument Avenue where it stood for over 100 years is now filled with trees and shrubs.
ABOVE, in March, VCU students and others gathered near the site where the statue of Confederate Gen. Williams Carter Wickham stood at Monroe Park. Protesters pulled it down in 2020.
Left, Michael Spence (left) of Team Henry Enterprises watered trees and plants that were installed at the former site of the memorial to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy.
Nice spring weather in March lured Richmonder Meggie Starr outside to read a book near where the Stonewall Jackson statue used to be on Monument Avenue, a tree-lined residential boulevard.
A garden has been created where the Maury monument once stood on Monument Avenue. Photo taken on Monday, May 2, 2022.
A pedestrian walkway is painted at Monument Avenue and Arthur Ashe Blvd. Photo was taken on Tuesday, April 5, 2022.
(L-R) Mike Grunawalt and Michael Spence, with Team Henry Enterprises LLC, take tags off a sourwood tree before they are planted Tuesday, April 5, 2022, where the J.E.B. Stuart monument once stood.
The area where the Stonewall Jackson Monument once stood at Monument Avenue and Arthur Ashe Blvd. is prepared for paving. Photo was taken on Tuesday, March 8, 2022.
Trees and plants were placed where the Maury monument once stood. Photo taken on Tuesday, April 5, 2022.
"Unless we want those landscaped circles on Monument Avenue to become permanent oversized planters, we need to start thinking about what's next," writes Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams.
The removal of Hill’s statue has taken longer because it is also his grave site. Hill’s remains were placed there in 1891.
The North won the war but the South won the narrative, to disastrous effect. America's legacy of slavery and white supremacy has our nation reeling. How can we talk seriously about reconciliation or reparations if we can't call slavery by its name?
When that moment of racial reckoning arrived in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, there were confrontations between law enforcement and protesters in Roanoke. But there were precious few Confederate monuments for protesters to focus their ire, even if they were so inclined.
