Roanoke’s Robert E. Lee memorial does not stand six stories high like the one to the Confederate general in Richmond does. Lee is not cast in bronze, astride a horse. Roanoke’s memorial to Lee is a stone pillar, about 10 feet tall, that sits in a quiet plaza that also bears his name.
But Roanoke’s Lee memorial will most likely meet the same fate as the imposing monument in Richmond that Gov. Ralph Northam ordered this week be taken down.
A majority of the Roanoke City Council wants to remove the Lee memorial from downtown Roanoke as soon as is legally possible, which will be sometime after July 1, when a new state law gives localities the right to take down monuments to the Confederate States of America.
“It’s way past time for the monument to go away,” Roanoke council member Bill Bestpitch said Friday.
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The issue of Confederate monuments emerged again in the wake of nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died in Minneapolis on May 25 after a white police officer kept a knee on his neck for more than eight minutes. On Thursday, Northam ordered that the massive state-owned Lee monument be removed from Monument Avenue.
Roanoke’s council considered doing something about its own Lee memorial in the summer of 2017, following the alt-right rally in Charlottesville during which counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed after a man rammed a car into a crowd. In fact, a few weeks after that rally, the Lee memorial in Roanoke was spray-painted with the words, “Rest in power, Heather Heyer.”
State law at the time prohibited localities from removing Confederate monuments. That will change July 1, when a law passed this year by new Democratic majorities in the General Assembly and signed by Northam goes into effect. The law establishes a legal process that municipalities must go through, which includes public hearings.
Roanoke appears ready to start that process soon.
“We want to make sure we follow the law, and I anticipate we will get together as a council and start having conversations about this,” said Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea.
Lea, the second African American mayor in Roanoke’s history, said in 2017 that he did “not want to stir the pot” on possibly removing the Lee memorial.
Friday evening, Lea clarified that he was in favor of removing the memorial, but still wanted the entire council and the public to weigh in on the process.
"I am supportive of moving the statue," Lea said. "I want to make sure we do it the right way and that there is an opportunity for public discourse."
Those council discussions will likely be in favor of removal.
Council members Anita Price and Trish White-Boyd were both adamant that the memorial be removed and that the name of Lee Plaza be changed.
“It’s time,” White-Boyd said. “I think you will discover that other members all concur that it’s a good time to have this conversation.”
White-Boyd, who is black, said she has mostly heard from white Roanokers who want the memorial taken down.
“Let me make clear, I haven’t heard from blacks,” White-Boyd said, “it’s been all white.”
Price, who is black, said the council conversations will be painful, but necessary.
“Finally,” she said. “The time is now. The Confederate monuments are symbols of an era, and not just an era, but of a mentality. Now, we’ve got leadership from our state leader. We’ve got a process. There are some difficult conversations that heretofore we were reluctant to have. But the wound is open. The Band-Aid is ripped off. It’s time to get through it and follow the process as it will be laid out.”
Roanoke’s Lee memorial was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1960, a year before the centennial of the start of the Civil War. Several council members noted that it was no coincidence that the Lee memorial was erected during the height of the civil rights movement and six years after the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling had ordered schools be integrated.
Virginia fought the ruling during a period known as Massive Resistance, a fight to reject integration that still smoldered in 1960.
“I don’t think the timing was coincidental” when Roanoke’s Lee memorial was erected, Bestpitch said. “It was intended as a message to keep the races apart.”
Roanoke Vice Mayor Joe Cobb agreed with Bestpitch’s opinion that the memorial represented a segregationist cause. He also noted that the timing of its placement correlated with Roanoke’s clearance and demolition of poorer black neighborhoods in northeast Roanoke during a program called urban renewal.
“This wasn’t a century ago, this was 50, 60 years ago,” Cobb said. “Right after Jim Crow and in the middle of urban renewal. That’s very chilling to me.”
Council member Djuna Osborne said that her personal feeling about the memorial is that “it no longer be erected in a place of reverence,” but she will wait on making a final decision until she hears from the public.
“I think it’s important to hear what people have to say about it and what we can do about it,” Osborne said.
Council member Michelle Davis could not be reached for comment Friday.
A council majority on Friday favored changing the name of Lee Plaza, which is notable for its tall, leafy trees and large marble tablets inscribed with the names of every Roanoker who died in 20th and 21st-century wars.
Lea said that if the council changes the plaza’s name he prefers that it “continues to recognize veterans.”
“We have some options there,” he added.
Bestpitch agreed that a new name for the plaza reflect its presence as the city’s war memorial.
“You could call it Freedom Plaza,” he said, “because every name there died so that we could keep our freedom.”
