Photo: Getty Images North America
A Confederate statue has been reinstalled in Washington, D.C. following President Donald Trump’s directive to restore monuments removed or altered since 2020.
The statue of Confederate General Albert Pike, first erected in 1901, was refurbished by the National Park Service (NPS) and reinstalled over the weekend after it was toppled and burned down in June 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, per HuffPost. At the time, Trump condemned the act, tweeting, “These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our Country!”
Trump issued an executive order in March instructing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to review “public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that had been taken down. The order claimed some removals aimed to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” or “minimize the value of certain historical events or figures.”
Pike remains the only Confederate general with an outdoor statue in the nation’s capital. He was known for enlisting Native Americans to support the Confederacy and for ties to the anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party. Pike has also been alleged to have led the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), though the Freemasons, of which he was a member, have disputed that claim.
The statue’s return follows Trump's decision this summer to restore the names of nine Army bases previously renamed to disassociate them from Confederate generals.
D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes-Norton called the reinstallation of Pike's statue “morally objectionable” and “an affront to the mostly Black and Brown residents of the District of Columbia.”
“Pike himself served dishonorably. He took up arms against the United States, misappropriated funds, and was ultimately captured and imprisoned by his own troops,” Holmes-Norton said, adding that the statue should be placed in a museum “and treated as a historical artifact, rather than celebrated in a public park.”
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