Federal Judge Orders Halt Of Confederate Memorial Removal

Effectively 50 years after the traitorous states were re-absorbed into the Union, ex-Confederate states still wanted to commemorate the Confederacy in perpetuity.

As BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported, a Confederate memorial was set to be taken down by Dec. 22, but a new development has stalled those plans. According to Reuters, on Dec. 18, a federal judge ordered that the work to take down a Confederate memorial must be stopped. A spokesperson for the Arlington National Cemetery, managed by the Department of Defense, said the cemetery intends to comply with the ruling. The monument is still subject to be removed in compliance with a Jan. 1 deadline to complete its removal.

According to Reuters, the cemetery’s website describes the monument as a sanitization of the system of slavery that existed pre-Civil War, a romanticization of the secession of the states that made up the Confederacy, and a perpetuation of the “Lost Cause” mythology.

The monument is currently on land that was taken from Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general. The monument was built in 1914, 49 years after the Civil War ended. Effectively, 50 years after the traitorous states were re-absorbed into the Union, ex-Confederate states still wanted to commemorate the Confederacy in perpetuity.

A lawsuit filed by a group called Defense Arlington filed a suit that accused the Pentagon of going around federal environmental law to take down the monument swiftly while also potentially disturbing surrounding graves in the process. U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston agreed that the potential to disturb the burial sites warranted a stop to the removal of the monument, at least temporarily.

The cemetery previously said that they would leave the base and foundation of the monument intact so that other graves around the area would not be disturbed. Judge Alston has set a hearing on the matter for Dec. 20 in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA.