Before a cheering crowd of onlookers and revelers, a crew of Richmond, Virginia, officials on Wednesday sawed apart and then systematically removed a massive statue of Robert E. Lee in what was once the epicenter of the Confederacy for which he fought, and lost.
The more-than-12-ton monument was dismantled and removed less than one week after a Virginia Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the Lee statue to be taken down, ending a protracted legal battle that began when Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) declared in 2020 that the memorial to the state's racist history was "wrong then, and it's wrong now." Shortly after the ruling, the state's Department of General Services issued a statement saying "this is an extremely complex removal that requires coordination with multiple entities to ensure the safety of everyone involved" without revealing Wednesday's date for the project.
