Members of the Virginia General Assembly were considering a Senate bill to get rid of the last Confederate statues in Richmond until a House committee killed the bill. But the effort to ditch the statues is not a lost cause.
A statue honoring Confederate General Stonewall Jackson faces the center of the Virginia Capitol, perhaps the most prominent spot in all of Capitol Square. That statue, along with two others honoring the Lost Cause, were about to be removed because of a bill that passed the Senate that was included in the Senate budget. But then a House committee unexpectedly killed the bill at the last minute as budget negotiations between the House and Senate broke down. Former Senator Adam Ebbin of Alexandria introduced the bill to ditch the statues, and he says he's hopeful the effort will be resurrected during the budget special session next month.
"I would have preferred the bill passed just to make it explicit, but I'm confident that it’ll be in the final budget agreement," Ebbin says. "And I'm very hopeful that that will prevail."
One bill that did prevail was legislation to discontinue license plates honoring Robert E. Lee and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. That measure was introduced by Delegate Dan Helmer, a Democrat from Fairfax County.
"Virginia needs to end itself being in the business of celebrating traitors who killed American soldiers to defend slavery," says Helmer. "That's not who we need to be as a country, and we're going to finish the job of making sure that America is about celebrating all Americans."
The governor has until April 13th to make a decision about the Confederate license plates, and lawmakers are expected to return to Richmond to strike a deal on the budget April 23rd.
