As Black Enterprise previously reported, a Confederate memorial was set to be taken down by Dec. 22, but a new development has stalled those plans. According to Reuters, on Dec. 18, a federal judge ordered that the work to take down a Confederate memorial must be stopped. A spokesperson for the Arlington National Cemetery, managed by the Department of Defense, said the cemetery intends to comply with the ruling. The monument is still subject to be removed in compliance with a Jan. 1 deadline to complete its removal.
According to Reuters, the cemetery’s website describes the monument as a sanitization of the system of slavery that existed pre-Civil War as well as a romanticization of the secession of the states that made up the Confederacy as well as a perpetuation of the “Lost Cause” mythology.
A lawsuit filed by a group called Defense Arlington filed a suit that accused the Pentagon of going around federal environmental law to take down the monument swiftly while also potentially disturbing surrounding graves in the process. U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston agreed that the potential to disturb the burial sites warranted a stop to the removal of the monument, at least temporarily.
Source: Black Enterprise
