Trump Defends Confederate Statues in Wake of Charlottesville Violence
‘Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart,’ president says
While defenders laud the statues as testaments to Southern bravery and memorials to lost lives, detractors consider them inseparable from the violent movement to fracture the U.S. and keep African Americans in bondage.
.. The Charlottesville City Council voted in February to remove the statue. After the clashes in Virginia, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh ordered Confederate-linked monuments to be removed, dispatching contractors in the middle of the night, she said, to avoid protests. A plaque honoring a Confederate leader was removed from a park in San Diego Wednesday morning, and the mayor of Birmingham, Ala., ordered the covering up of a Confederate memorial to block it from view... Mayor Levar Stoney formed an advisory group in June to redefine what he called the “false narrative” of the Confederate statues lining the city’s grand Monument Avenue...“Confederate monuments like the Jackson statue were never intended as benign symbols,” they wrote. “Rather, they were the clearly articulated artwork of white supremacy.”