Judge Allows Confederate Statue At Arlington National Cemetery To Be Removed—Ending Day-Long Hold...

A federal judge in Virginia allowed for the controversial removal of a Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery after a lawsuit filed by the group Defend Arlington initially led to a temporary order halting its removal, amid ongoing objections from Republican lawmakers and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

“I saw no desecration of graves,” Alston said in court, per the Associated Press. “The grass wasn’t even disturbed.” Alston said that he issued the order halting the memorial’s removal after receiving a call that the graves around the memorial were being disturbed, but that he found that not to be the case when he subsequently toured the site himself, the Associated Press reported.

The Naming Commission was established by Congress in 2021 in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, as the country wrestled with debate over systemic racism and concern about the persistence of Confederate markers, monuments and names on military installment. The Commission, since then, has recommended the renaming or removal for several controversial installments, like Fort Bragg in North Carolina, named after a Confederate general and now renamed to Fort Liberty. The controversial 1914 Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery is said to depict the “Lost Cause” narrative of the Civil War, a narrative that romanticizes the pre-Civil War South and denies the horrors of slavery. It features, among other things, an enslaved Black man following his owner into war and a Black woman carrying the infant of a white officer.The Naming Commission recommended removing the memorial last year as part of its efforts to rename and remove military monuments, ships and other installations commemorating the Confederacy. But the decision has generated blowback from Republican officials. A group of more than 40 congressional Republicans wrote a letter to the Department of Defense arguing that the memorial is not meant to commemorate the Confederacy, but to represent unity and national reconciliation after the Civil War. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has announced his intention to move the installment to another location.