Federal judge rules removal of a Confederate statue in Arlington Cemetery may proceed
By Melissa Alonso and Sabrina Souza, CNN
(CNN) — The removal of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia may proceed, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, after finding groups who tried to halt it failed to prove that keeping the monument was in the public’s best interest.
US District Judge Ronnie D. Alston granted a temporary restraining order Monday, barring the memorial’s removal after a request for a preliminary injunction by the groups Defend Arlington and Save Southern Heritage Florida.
The groups claimed the Defense Department’s plan to remove the memorial violated the National Environmental Policy Act, and that the department had failed to take care of the grave sites surrounding the memorial site during the removal process.
But in an order filed Tuesday, Alston said the plaintiffs did “not establish that a preliminary injunction is in the public interest.”
“Plaintiffs’ complaints regarding the removal efforts being likely to damage the gravesites are misinformed or misleading,” the order said.
The statue’s removal is part of a wider action to remove Confederate symbols from US military facilities set forth in a Department of Defense directive issued last October. Arlington National Cemetery had anticipated the monument would be completely removed by Friday, spokesperson Kerry Meeker previously told CNN.
The bronze statue – designed by American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel and unveiled in 1914 – depicts a woman atop a 32-foot-tall pedestal. The figure is wearing a crown adorned with olive leaves, holding a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, according to the cemetery. A Biblical inscription at her feet reads, “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
Other figures on the monument include a Black woman depicted as a “Mammy,” carrying an infant of a White officer, and a Black man following his owner to war, according to the cemetery.
Though the monument’s bronze elements were to be removed, its granite base and foundation were to stay at the site to avoid disturbing surrounding graves, cemetery officials had said.
According to the cemetery’s website, Confederate remains weren’t allowed to be buried at Arlington until 1900, 35 years after the Civil War ended.
“By 1902, 262 Confederate bodies were interred in a specially designated section, Section 16,” the cemetery said. The total is now more than 400, according to the cemetery website.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has voiced his disappointment in the removal plans, according to his spokesperson Macaulay Porter. The governor planned to relocate it to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley, Porter said.
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