Listen to Robert E. Lee’s descendant
Robert Wright Lee IV, a North Carolina minister and descendant of Gen. Robert E. Lee, notes well the status of many Confederate statues.
“These statues have morphed into a symbol of racism, a symbol of bigotry, a symbol of the alt-right, a symbol of white nationalist movements,” he says in an Aug. 14 piece on the Huffington Post website. “That is not okay and that can never be celebrated or honored in any way, whether you believe you should honor legacy or ancestors or not.”
Take into account that the statue of Lee in Charlottesville, Va., was placed there in 1924. It served as a gesture for the developing Jim Crow era growing across the South and included Lexington.
To remember history? I’ve been in Germany and never saw a statue of Adolf Hitler nor a street in his name, and in Italy the same was true of Benito Mussolini.
D. Les Hill
Lexington
This story was originally published September 5, 2017 at 2:32 PM with the headline "Listen to Robert E. Lee’s descendant."