Judge Clears Way for Removal of Memorial Glorifying Confederacy’s ‘Lost Cause’

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal judge in Virginia on Tuesday cleared the way for the removal of a Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery, just one day after a temporary restraining order had halted work to remove it.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Rossie David Alston Jr. found that a group called Defend Arlington had failed to show that it is in the public interest for the monument to stay and that its claims that nearby graves were at risk of damage were “misinformed or misleading.”

The disassembly of the memorial was stopped on Monday after Defend Arlington, which is affiliated with an organization called Save Southern Heritage Florida, requested a restraining order.

The group had filed a lawsuit on Sunday against the Defense Department, claiming that the decision to take down the monument was rushed and that the work to remove it would damage the surrounding graves and headstones.

The Defense Department’s “insistence on pressing forward with their removal has and will cause severe damage to the memorial and the families of its creator and those buried there,” Defend Arlington wrote in a court filing.

Before issuing the ruling on Tuesday Alston toured the site himself and later said he “saw no desecration of any graves.”

Congress approved legislation in 2021 requiring the removal of all memorials to the Confederacy on public property. It appointed a commission to oversee the removals.

The “Confederate Memorial,” erected in 1914 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, glamorizes the “Lost Cause” rhetoric of the Old South. It overlooks Confederate graves.

A description of the statue on the cemetery’s website says, “The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”

The memorial displays a bronze statue of a robed woman symbolizing the Confederate states sitting on top of a three-story pedestal. The pedestal is decorated with images of Confederate soldiers and civilians, including an African American slave woman holding a Southern soldier’s baby and an African American man following his owner to war.

Like other Confederate memorials, Congress ordered that it be taken down by Jan. 1. The legislation was prompted by public outrage in 2020 after the Minneapolis, Minnesota, police killing of George Floyd.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin also opposed the removal of the memorial. He arranged a deal with the Defense Department for it to be placed in the Virginia Museum of the Civil War at New Market Battlefield State Historical Park.

On Sunday night, Alston wrote in a court order that the Defense Department and its contractors should halt “any acts to deconstruct, tear down, remove or alter the object of this case — the Confederate Reconciliation Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and the surrounding gravesites — pending further action of this court.”

The “further action” referred to a hearing Tuesday to determine whether the order should remain in place or deconstruction can continue.

The Defense Department argued in a court filing for quick resolution of the dispute to meet the Jan. 1 congressional deadline. The work is slated to take four days by a contractor that is available only through the end of December.

“Plaintiffs have made the necessary showing that they are entitled to a temporary restraining order pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(b) to preserve the status quo pending a decision by the court on the merits of this action,” Alston’s order on Sunday said.

The contractor had already installed safety fencing around the memorial and moved heavy equipment onto the site when the judge issued the temporary restraining order.

Arlington National Cemetery denied in a news release that there was a threat to surrounding gravesites.

“During the deconstruction, the area around the memorial will be protected to ensure no impact to the surrounding landscape and grave markers and to ensure the safety of visitors in and around the vicinity of the deconstruction,” the news release said.

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