Richmond, VA Residents Pull Down Jefferson Davis Statue as Crowd Cheers

For those of you not up on your Civil War history, Jefferson Davis was the wholly incompetent president of the Confederacy. His Wikipedia biography includes this sentence, "his preoccupation with detail, reluctance to delegate responsibility, lack of popular appeal, feuds with powerful state governors and generals, favoritism toward old friends, inability to get along with people who disagreed with him, neglect of civil matters in favor of military ones, and resistance to public opinion all worked against him." In other words, he was pretty awful...thankfully. But, after the war many southerners still held him in high regard and in 1907 a statue was erected in his honor. Yesterday, the citizens of Richmond tore it down.

AP: "Protesters pulled down a more than century-old statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in the former capital of the Confederacy, damaging a huge rebel monument as demonstrations continued following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota....

..."Police were on the scene and videos on social media showed a crowd cheering as the statue, installed by a Confederate heritage group during the days of legalized segregation in the South, was towed away."

The Mayor of Richmond, Levar Stoney, issued a statement that captures the views of many city residents saying, “Richmond is no longer the capital of the Confederacy — it is filled with diversity and love for all — and we need to demonstrate that,”

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By: Don Lam & Curated Content