Confederate flag is flown over protest of rebels’ monuments
Posted: Saturday, September 19, 2015 1:45 pm
BY MICHAEL MARTZ AND GRAHAM MOOMAW Richmond Times-Dispatch
Community activists and historic preservationists got help from an unusual source to draw attention to their protest Saturday of statues of Confederate leaders on Monument Avenue during the first day of training for the UCI Road World Championships.
A small plane carrying a banner with a Confederate battle flag and the phrase “Confederate heros matter” circled above Monument Avenue, where the protest had gathered at the statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.
The Virginia Flaggers, who took credit for the banner on their Facebook page, said the misspelling of “heroes” was “Pilot error. We sent the right spelling. We think the point was still made.”
“This is the first time he’s ever messed up,” Grayson Jennings, a spokesman for the Virginia Flaggers, said of the pilot in an interview. “I don’t think half the people even knew he messed up.”
Jennings said the banner had nothing to do with bike races. “Most (of the group’s members) have no interest in a bicycle race or hearing what those people had to say about getting the bike race rerouted for the monument,” he said.
People carrying Confederate battle flags at Capitol Square on Saturday were not members of the group, he said.
The drone of the aircraft did not drown the half-hour protest of the decision to make Monument Avenue a focal point of the world bicycle competition.
“So, we are here today to tell the world that most Richmonders do not support showcasing these monuments to Confederate military and political leaders during this world-famous sports event,” said Ana Edwards, chairwoman of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project of the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality.
Speakers at the protest included representatives of Preservation Virginia and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. They did not address concerns about the monuments, but issued statements in support of a proposed 9-acre memorial park in Shockoe Bottom to commemorate victims of the domestic slave trade centered there before the Civil War.
“There is renewed public debate across the country about how we understand and memorialize the painful legacy of slavery, and Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom lies in the crosshairs of this important conversation,” trust spokeswoman Germonique Ulmer said in a statement read at the protest.
The trust also took aim at a proposal by Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones to build a $30 million slavery museum at the site of Lumpkin’s Jail, a notorious antebellum slave jail in Shockoe Bottom, as well as the mayor’s thwarted attempt to build a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom.
“The reminders of the slave trade that lie beneath Shockoe cannot be ignored,” Ulmer said. “And though we agree that vacant lots and surface parking are not acceptable ways to mark its painful history, neither are a baseball stadium and a token museum at the Lumpkin’s Jail site.”
Grant Neely, the mayor’s chief of staff, stood a short distance from the protest with Richmond police Maj. Steve Drew, who said the organizers had properly notified police about their plans for the event.
Edwards, whose organization has led protests against the Shockoe ballpark proposal and the covering of an African burial ground by a state-owned parking lot, said the organizing group Richmond 2015 and UCI had chosen the wrong way to showcase the city’s history.
She said the Davis statue at Monument and Davis avenues marked the halfway mark in the main cycling events, which also will pass statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
“At the very least the route could also have included the one black person memorialized on Monument Avenue, who actually fought racism: Richmond tennis champion and anti-apartheid activist Arthur Ashe,” she said to applause from the small crowd gathered for the protest.
gmoomaw@timesdispatch.com
http://www.richmond.com/news/local/city-of-richmond/article_9f6b0ece-9f28-5917-ba48-0e73f501dd5a.html
