Statue of Confederate General Albert Pike to be reinstalled in Washington
"The National Park Service announced today that it will restore and reinstall the bronze statue of Albert Pike, which was toppled and vandalized during riots in June 2020," it said in a statement.
The U.S. saw nationwide protests in 2020 following the killing of Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for over eight minutes.
The National Park Service said reinstalling the statue was in line with recent executive orders signed by President Donald Trump, who has been a strident critic of renaming or removing Confederate statues and monuments.
An executive order that Trump signed in late March titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" suggested that Trump sought to purge elements of what conservatives view as a revisionist history of the United States that places systemic racism at the heart of its narrative.
Rights advocates say such steps undermine the acknowledgment of critical phases of American history.
Earlier this year, Trump restored two U.S. Army bases to their former names of Fort Benning and Fort Bragg despite a federal law that prohibits honoring generals who fought for the South during the Civil War. The Trump administration says the names honor different individuals, all former soldiers.
In 2017 during his first term, Trump defended white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, who protested the city's decision to remove a statue of the Confederate commander Robert E. Lee. At the time, Trump said there were "very fine people of both sides" of the fight, sparking widespread outrage.
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It was originally dedicated in 1901 at the behest of the Freemasons, who successfully lobbied Congress to grant them land for the statue they said would honor Pike's 32 years as Sovereign Grand Commander of the Ancient Rite of Scottish Freemasonry. Congress agreed to give the Masons the land so long as Pike would be depicted in civilian, and not military clothing. The DC City Council called for its removal for the first time in 1992, and Delegate to the House of Representatives Eleanor Holmes Norton (pictured) has introduced multiple bills in Congress to get it removed in the decades that followed, NBC Washington reports. One such resolution referred to Pike as a 'chief founder of the post Civil War Ku Klux Klan,' a claim the Masons strongly deny. But Pike did lead a regimen of Native Americans in Arkansas who sided with the Confederacy and were accused of scalping Union troops in an 1862 battle. He eventually received a pardon from President Andrew Johnson for his wartime actions and went on to become a prominent member of the Freemasons. During the riots in 2020, protesters spray painted the statue, decrying Pike as a 'racist' and sharing their support for the Black Lives Matter movement. It was one of many such Confederate statues toppled that summer, which Trump decried in his first term. 'Very sad to see States allowing roving gangs of wise guys, anarchists & looters, many of them having no idea what they are doing, indiscriminately ripping down our statues and monuments to the past,' he tweeted at the time. 'Some are great works of art, but all represent our History & Heritage, both the good and the bad. 'It is important for us to understand and remember, even in turbulent and difficult times, and learn from them. Knowledge comes from the most unusual of places!' The president also hit out at police for 'not doing their job as they watch a statue be ripped down & burn[ed]' after it was reported that officers did not respond to the scene until approximately an hour after the crowds gathered - despite police headquarters being mere feet away, WUSA reports. By then, the statue had already been toppled and torched, with officers left only able to extinguish the flames. In the years since, Delegate Holmes Norton has lobbied for the statue to be placed in a museum. 'I've long believed Confederate statues should be placed in museums as historical artifacts, not remain in locations that imply honor,' she told WUSA on Monday. 'President Trump's longstanding determination to honor Confederate General Albert Pike by restoring and reinstalling the Pike statue is as indefensible as it is morally objectionable,' she continued. She went onto claim that Pike 'served dishonorably' and noted that he 'took up arms against the United States, misappropriated funds and was ultimately imprisoned by his fellow own troops. He resigned in disgrace after committing a war crime and dishonoring even his own Confederate military service.' Holmes Norton then announced that she will take action to prevent the statue from going back up. 'Given the NPS announcement today that it will restore and reinstall the statue, I plan to reintroduce my bill, which would permanently remove the statue of Pike and authorize the Secretary of the Interior to donate the statue to a museum or a similar entity,' she said. 'A statue honoring a racist and a traitor has no place on the streets of DC,' she declared.
