Virginia removes three Confederate memorials

Years into efforts to purge Richmond, Virginia — a former Confederate Capital — of memorials honoring the Confederacy, the Commonwealth of Virginia began removing three more Confederate memorials in the city on Friday.

Statues honoring Confederate Generals Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and Gov. William “Extra Billy” Smith, as well as Confederate Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, had been displayed in Capitol Square, a public park and civic campus near the state Capitol, for more than 100 years.

The Virginia legislature ordered the statues’ removal during its 2026 session.

“This doesn’t change the history of the Civil War,” said former Democratic State Sen. Adam Ebbin, who sponsored the legislation. “It changes who we choose to venerate on the Capitol lawn.”

Efforts to remove Confederate statues from prominent places of honor in Richmond began in 2018, estimated Democratic state Sen. Mike Jones.

“They’re symbols,” Jones said of the monuments. “Is this what the Commonwealth is about? Is this where we want to direct people to?”

“It’s not.”

The monuments will be preserved by the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, which said in a statement the statues will be relocated to battlefield sites within the Shenandoah Valley.

“These monuments were intended to serve as tributes to valor, sacrifice and community heritage during a difficult chapter in American history,” the Virginia division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy wrote in a statement. “Our desire is that memorials and works of art should be displayed in the manner in which donors intended, so that the public may continue to learn from them, think deeply about them and come to their own conclusions.”