A statue of a Confederate general that demonstrators toppled and burned in D.C. in 2020 will be reinstalled, the National Park Service announced.
The bronze statue depicting Confederate Gen. Albert Pike is being restored, the Park Service said in a statement Monday. Officials shared a photo of a worker removing corrosion and paint.
“The restoration aligns with federal responsibilities under historic preservation law as well as recent executive orders to beautify the nation’s capital and re-instate pre-existing statues,” a statement from the agency said.
In June 2020, demonstrators used ropes to tear down the statue outside Metropolitan Police Department headquarters. On live TV, they doused the statue in lighter fluid and set it ablaze.
Juneteenth Jun 19, 2020Demonstrators Topple, Burn Statue of Confederate General Near DC Police Headquarters
Mayor Muriel Bowser decried property destruction and defended city police. President Donald Trump then called for the statue to go back up.
Jason Charter, an anti-fascist organizer, was arrested in 2020 after the Pike statute came down, but the charges were dropped. He said restoring it is part of a troubling trend.
“At first really shocked, but after seeing what’s been going on in the administration since Trump has entered office, it really just reminded me that they don’t care,” Charter said.
“They want to bring back these values that almost destroyed our nation during the Civil War, almost destroyed our nation during the Civil Rights movement and in the past 10 years, especially since George Floyd has died, has almost destroyed the nation and is continuing to destroy the nation,” he said.
Crews are aiming to have the statue up in October, the Park Service said.
“Site preparation to repair the statue’s damaged masonry plinth will begin shortly, with crews repairing broken stone, mortar joints, and mounting elements,” the statement said.
The Pike statue, dedicated in 1901, has been a source of controversy for years. The Confederate general was also a longtime leader of the Freemasons, who revere Pike. It was built at the request of Masons, who successfully lobbied Congress to grant them land for the statue as long as Pike would be depicted in civilian, not military, clothing.
D.C. officials tried to remove the statue for years. The D.C. Council said it first called for its removal in 1992. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced multiple bills in Congress to get it removed.
One proposed resolution calling for the removal of the statue referred to Pike as a “chief founder of the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan.” The Klan connection is a frequent accusation from Pike’s critics and one which the Masons dispute.
After the announcement, Norton condemned the decision, saying Confederate statues belong in museums, and she will reintroduce a bill to permanently remove the Pike statue.
“The decision to honor Albert Pike by reinstalling the Pike statue is as odd and indefensible as it is morally objectionable,” Norton said in a statement. “A statue honoring a racist and a traitor has no place on the streets of D.C.”
In an executive order this March on “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” Trump said the secretary of the Interior would determine whether statutes have been removed since 2020 to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” Trump ordered their reinstatement.
“My first concern is that we really haven’t moved the ball at all in the past five years,” Charter said. “It’s appalling to see the federal government push their will, and it’s not the federal government in general, it’s the executive branch, pushing their will on the people of D.C. and that is not democratic in any way, shape or form.”
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