ARLINGTON, Va. — A statue memorializing the Confederacy at Arlington National Cemetery came down on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after a federal judge cleared the way for its removal.
U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston’s ruling reversed his own decision on Monday to issue a temporary injunction barring the memorial’s dismantling. According to The Associated Press, Alston had halted the removal based on a phone call from supporters of the monument, who claimed that contractors were desecrating the graves surrounding the memorial.
The judge toured the site himself prior to Tuesday’s hearing, the AP reported.
“I saw no desecration of any graves,” Alston said. “The grass wasn’t even disturbed.”
Cemetery officials had begun the removal of the monument as part of the William M. Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. Section 370 of the act required the removal of “names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia to assets of the Department of Defense that commemorate the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America.”
A commission established under the act created a list of changes, including the renaming of multiple military bases and the removal of monuments that commemorated the Confederacy and its leaders. The Arlington Confederate memorial was listed because the commission found that it offered a “nostalgic, mythologized version of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”
Defend Arlington, the group that led the fight to keep the monument intact, argued that it was erected in 1914 to promote reconciliation between the North and the South, according to the AP.
Commission members recommended taking down the statue at the top of the memorial but leaving the granite base and foundation intact to avoid disturbing the graves around it. The act required the memorial to be altered or removed by the end of the year.
In court records, Alston described the legal battle as an attempt to place the court in the middle of a fight between “individuals extolling the virtues, romanticism and history of the Old South and equally passionate individuals, with government endorsement, who believe that art accentuating what they believe is a harsh depiction of a time when a certain race of people were enslaved and treated like property is not deserving of a memorial at a place of refuge, honor and national recognition.”
The judge said his ruling was not designed to resolve that debate. He wrote that his decision was based on “relevant case law, statutory law and administrative direction.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved all the commission’s recommendations in October 2022. In a memo, Austin wrote that the installations and facilities under the department’s control are not only national security assets, but also “public symbols of our military, and of course, they are the places where our service members and their families work and live.”
“The names of these installations and facilities should inspire all those who call them home, fully reflect the history and the values of the United States and commemorate the best of the republic that we are all sworn to protect,” Austin wrote.
Read the judge’s ruling below.
The Arlington statue, which the AP reported was designed to depict the South, features a bronze woman crowned with olive leaves. She holds a laurel wreath and farm implements.
At her feet is a Biblical inscription: “They have beat their swords into plough shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
The statue also features a Black woman depicted as “Mammy,” holding what is believed to be the child of a white officer, the AP reported. A male slave is also shown following his owner to war.
In court on Tuesday, Alston questioned how the memorial can be seen as a sign of reconciliation, pointing out the “slave running after his ‘massa’ as he walks down the road.”
“What is reconciling about that?” the judge asked.
Alston, who is Black, was appointed to the bench in 2019 by former President Donald Trump.
According to the AP, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has made arrangements for the memorial to be moved to New Market Battlefield State Historical Park.