The District has become the latest municipality to petition the National Park Service (NPS) to remove Confederate or racially-sensitive memorials from public parks. In an Aug. 17 statement, eight council elected officials asked NPS to remove a statute of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike from the grounds of the Judiciary Square, which borders the District Superior Court.

The D.C. council is making calls to remove Confederate General Albert Pike’s statue from Judiciary Square in D.C. (Courtesy photo)

The letter, signed by Councilmembers David Grosso (I-At-large), Elissa Silverman (I-At-large), Anita Bonds (D-At-large), Robert White (D-At-large), Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1), Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5), and Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) said Pike does not represent the city’s values of diversity and inclusion. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine also signed the letter.

“We, in the District of Columbia, hold dear the values of equality, diversity, and inclusion, which are in direct conflict with the values embodied by the statue,” according to the statement. “In a time when these values are under constant attack by White supremacists, neo-Nazis, and far-right terrorists, the presence of a statue honoring Albert Pike only serves to perpetuate and incite hate, violence, and oppression.”

The movement to remove Confederate statues across the country began in 2015 following the mass killing of nine Black parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The gunman, Dylann Roof, an avowed White supremacist, posed with symbols of hatred, including the Confederate flag, before his rampage.

While some proponents of the statues view the memorials as historical, others like Wilmer Leon, a political scientist and host of Sirius radio show “Inside the Issues,” told the AFRO that the purpose of memorials is to provide lasting evidence of someone or something great; making Albert Pike a bit of an outlier.

“He sided with the Confederate Army and was imprisoned after being charged with misappropriating funds, as well as abandoning his wife and having an affair with a 19-year-old sculptress, Vinnie Ream,” Leon said. “Those who believe that Pike was worthy of note are as factually wrong and as ideologically misguided as those who championed The Lost Cause of the Confederacy.”

Leon, author of Politics: Another Perspective, Commentary and Analysis on Race, War, Ethics and the American Political Landscape in the Age of Obama went on to say that the statues are representations of attempts of the traditional Southern White society to describe the Confederate traitorous cause as a heroic one against great odds despite its defeat. “Those who believe that Albert Pike is worthy of note due to his involvement with Freemasonry should pay the cost to have his statue moved to the grounds of the headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in Washington, D.C. where his body is interred.”

According to Stop Police Terror Project director Eugene Puryear, “ is a guy who loved slavery so much that he quit two political parties. He wrote pamphlets about it, and then when the Civil War started, he raised three regiments of troops,” he told protestors on Aug. 20. “The Richard Spencers of the world, they want to invoke fear in people, they want people to fear their fascist movement. This is a sign that people are not going to let that genie out of that bottle, that people are going to fight back.”