Confederate descendants ask Richmond Mayor to remove statue from Monroe Park

The statue honors Confederate Gen. Williams Carter Wickham. It has stood in the park, located in the heart of Virginia Commonwealth University, since 1891.

Clayton and Will Wickham, ages 25 and 21, respectively, are related to the general on their father’s side. They emailed the letter to the mayor’s office and all nine members of the council on Tuesday, Clayton said in an interview.

“First, we want to be sure you know that, as a plantation owner, Confederate general and industrialist, General Wickham unapologetically accrued power and wealth through the exploitation of enslaved people,” the letter states.

“Second, we hope that our voices, though far less important than those of black Richmonders on this issue, will underscore a common feeling: The removal of these statues is long overdue.”

The brothers grew up on Monument Avenue, but left the city to attend college. They decided to write the letter after unrest at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville earlier this month.

That a growing contingent of relatives of Confederate figures have spoken out on the matter in recent weeks factored into their decision, Clayton said.

“Because it seems rhetorically important to have descendants of Robert E. Lee speaking out, in a sense that it communicated such a broad support for removal, we felt like it might be relevant to express our support for removing the statue,” Clayton said.

Wickham’s is one of two statues honoring Confederate officers in Monroe Park. The other is a stone cross dedicated to Gen. Fitzhugh Lee for his service in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. Lee, the nephew of Civil War General Robert E. Lee, was an officer for the Confederacy during the Civil War and later a Virginia governor.

In 2014, the city leased Monroe Park to a nonprofit, the Monroe Park Conservancy. After a fundraising campaign, the conservancy last November closed the park to complete a $6 million renovation. It is scheduled to be completed in spring 2018.

Both statues are included in plans for the renovated park, said Alice Massie, the nonprofit’s president.

At the beginning of the year, Massie said the Wickham family had approached her and asked for the statue to be reinterpreted in some way when the park reopens.

“Before New Orleans and Baltimore and Charlottesville, they came forward and said, ‘Let’s think about the context of this statue,’ ” she said.

The conservancy isn’t opposed to removing either statue, Massie said, but is awaiting direction from Stoney’s office and his Monument Avenue Commission, she added. Stoney’s chief of staff, Lincoln Saunders, has served on the Conservancy’s board of directors since April.

“We’re open-minded,” Massie said. “We’re very willing to make changes.”

Stoney formed the 10-person commission in June to study how the city could “add context” to the Confederate monuments lining Monument Avenue. In the wake of Charlottesville, the mayor initially defended the approach.

Days later, Stoney expanded the commission’s charge to include a consideration of relocation and removal, joining politicians and institutions across the state and country who announced they would accelerate plans to remove Confederate statues.

Citing safety concerns, Stoney’s office announced last Friday that the commission’s next public hearing, originally scheduled for Sept. 13, was postponed.

To date, Stoney has not directed the commission to examine other vestiges of the Confederacy in the city.

Jim Nolan, a spokesman for Stoney, stated in an email that the mayor’s office had not yet seen the Wickham letter.

“We look forward to reviewing it and soliciting input from the Monroe Park Conservancy, council and other interested parties,” Nolan wrote in the email.

In an interview Wednesday, Clayton Wickham said the intention of the letter was not to ascribe importance to the brothers’ opinions as the general’s descendants, but to join the chorus of voices calling for removal of all Confederate statues in a “constructive” way.

“Our ancestry is something we have to grapple with and can’t ignore as people, and it shapes who we are and there’s the history of privilege and shame that accompanies our family history,” Wickham said. “But as far as the public discourse about these monuments, it really doesn’t matter very much what the descendants of so-and-so say.”