Shaping History: Monument-Toppling, Racial Justice and the Law

By Center for Art Law

Two years after the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, including the terror killing of counter-protestor Heather Heyer, the culprit confederate statues of Robert E. Lee (Henry Shrady and Leo Lentelli, 1924) and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (Charles Keck, 1921) (the “Statues”) have been allowed to stay in situ. A judgment issued in September 2019 by Judge Richard E. Moore in the Charlottesville Circuit Court has given them the protection of the law by means of a permanent injunction against their removal.^[1] This holding overrides the 2017 Charlottesville City Council decision to remove the statues, which raises broad questions around the relationship between democracy, politics, and the law. But the less abstract issue, and one that illuminates important aspects of contemporary American society, is that of “monument-toppling,” an act whereby protestors try to physically take down a public monument in an act of activism.

The last few years have seen a growing mainstream discourse around race in America. The 2016 election proved to be a catalyst for much of this political energy. Several confederate statues across the country have been toppled (including Roger Taney in Maryland; Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney in Johnston, Texas; and “Old Joe” in Florida), and other cultural works have been removed from public view, including Yale’s stained glass windows depicting a slavery scene in the dining hall of Calhoun College. Last summer, student protestors toppled the confederate statue of “Silent Sam” at the University of North Carolina, an event described by an alumna as a “joyous moment,” and by university officials as “unacceptable,” “dangerous,” “incomprehensible” and “unlawful.”^[2] Just this October, George Washington High School Alumni Association sued the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education over its vote to remove a mural depicting slavery and genocide in the school. (Read more on New-Deal era murals here and here).