IF YOU DRIVE FAR ENOUGH down Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., past the statues of Confederate leaders General Robert E. Lee and President Jefferson Davis, you’ll find a bronze likeness of native son Arthur Ashe, the tennis legend and activist, holding books and a racket.
A few miles to the east is the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, not far from a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
This is how the former Confederate capital has dealt with the weight of history: not by removing troubling monuments, but by adding to them. It’s a different approach than the one taken by many Southern cities and towns, which have been roiled by the push to remove monuments to Confederate leaders and prominent slave holders. From St. Louis to Orlando, from New Orleans to Charlottesville, Va., the prospect of the statues’ coming down has led to angry, sometimes violent protests among those who see them as vital to their heritage and others who see them as emblems of hate.
Yet in Richmond, which has no shortage of public memorials to defenders of white supremacy, there has been comparatively little outcry. The reason, say many residents and historians, is that the city has been working for decades to reinterpret its past, updating older tributes with much-needed context while adding new ones to the canon.
This story is from the July 3,2017 edition of Time.
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This story is from the July 3,2017 edition of Time.
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