Virginia Officials Can Remove and Donate Richmond’s Last Confederate Statue, Judge Rules

A Virginia judge on Tuesday cleared the way for officials to control the removal of Richmond’s final monument to the Confederacy, bringing to an end a month-long legal scrap between the city and a group of indirect descendants of the general to whom the memorial is dedicated. Richmond officials plan to give the 130-year-old memorial for General A.P. Hill to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, according to the Associated Press. The move drew condemnation from the plaintiffs, four of Hill’s “collateral descendants,” who filed a complaint in September. The descendants did not object to the statue’s removal, but wanted it transferred into their possession, planning to relocate it to a battle site in Culpeper County. Circuit Court Judge David Eugene Cheek Sr.’s Tuesday order granted the city’s petition to move not only the statue, but Hill’s remains, which are interred beneath the monument. In a statement praising Cheek’s decision, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney called the fight “the last stand for the Lost Cause in our city.”