A unanimous vote from Roanoke City Council last night ensures that the broken Robert E. Lee memorial won’t return to Lee Plaza in downtown Roanoke. WFIR’s Ian Price has details:
By a 7-0 vote, Roanoke City Council voted tonight to remove the monument to General Robert E Lee – erected in 1960 – from Lee Plaza downtown. Under a new state law that gave municipalities the right to decide the fate of monuments and statures honoring the Confederacy, museums, battlefields and other historical venues can petition to take the Lee Monument over the next 30days. All that remains in the plaza is the base; the rest of it was hauled away and placed in storage after a resident knocked it down. “We did it the right way,” said Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea about the process, which happened after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
