Overview
- Crews have begun taking down the last three Confederate-linked statues that stood on Capitol Square in Richmond.
- The removed monuments honor Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, William “Extra Billy” Smith, and Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, which were installed on the Capitol grounds in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- A standalone bill to require removal passed the state Senate but stalled in the House, and lawmakers ultimately placed the removal mechanism into the state budget to carry out the action.
- The Virginia Department of General Services says the state gifted the statues to the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, which plans to preserve and relocate them to battlefield sites in the Shenandoah Valley.
- The takedown updates a broader trend of monument removals that accelerated after 2017 and 2020 and has drawn sharply different political and media reactions over how public history should be commemorated.