On the mornings of June 9 & 10, for the first time in over 90 days, I left the house for something other than essential purchases.
But it was essential.
The Robert E. Lee Monument on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va. was scheduled to be removed from the state-owned property where it has sat since 1890. While the coronavirus has prohibited from documenting history, forcing me to observe it through device screens, this was something I could not let go.
So, in the dawn of the mornings, I slipped down to the city to see what I could see. From the images I captured, I posted a gallery on Facebook that caught the attention of a college friend of mine, Robert Swann.
Robert earned his Masters in Architecture from Harvard and currently serves on the Dallas Landmark Commission. He has been championing historical preservation in Dallas’s Freedmenstown for over 10 years, not only as an activist, but as a resident of the 10th Avenue historic district.
As he viewed my images and the immediacy of the monuments removal, he was immediately drawn to the parallels with the Berlin Wall – its purpose, its place in history, its demolition, and its preservation. He reached out to me for my thoughts on the situation and after more than a few hours of conversation, we found we shared enough common ground to “collaborate” on a video project. I say collaborate only in the sense that I provided most of the art and inspiration; Robert did all the heavy lifting to create the final piece presented here.
Please watch the video.
If it moves you and if you feel that this public art represents a truer snapshot of history than the false Lost Cause narrative that the monument represents, I invite you to read and consider the petition that Robert crafted.