- The city of
Charlottesville , Virginia, removed a statue of Confederate Gen.Robert E. Lee in July. - The city council on Tuesday voted to give it to an African-American museum.
The city of Charlottesville, Virginia, is giving a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to an African-American art museum, which says it plans to melt down the statue to make a public artwork.
The bronze statue, which depicts the general on horseback, was removed in July after a yearslong battle to get it taken down.
The city council voted on Tuesday to donate the statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, an art and history museum about the area's African-American community.
Andrea Douglas, the executive director of the center, said in a video on Tuesday that the hope is to "create something that transforms what was once toxic in our public spaces into something beautiful and more reflective of our entire community's social values."
She said the project would let the community decide what should be in public spaces.
Other statues of Lee have also been removed in the city.
The removal of Confederate monuments has been a major focus of anti-racism activists, as Insider's Kimberly Leonard and Rebecca Cohen reported.
More than 160 Confederate symbols were renamed or removed from public spaces in the US in 2020, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.