Lexington’s Confederate statues and symbols must come down. This town can no longer pretend to care about Black people while simultaneously glorifying men whose life-defining act was fighting to keep Black people in chains. 

We glorify them with statues and with names, at our colleges, at our hospital, at our cemetery, and on our streets. What message does this send to the Black people who live here? What message does this send to the kids in Lexington, of all races, who are starting to piece together how race works in this town and in this country?

To those concerned about “saving history”: the history of the Confederacy will always be with us. Lee and Jackson will always be worthy of historical examination, in the appropriate setting. That setting is not, and never has been, street names, building names, and heroic statues. The statues, in particular, were never about “saving history.” They were built long after the end of the Civil War, during the era of Jim Crow, as part of a campaign to mythologize Lee and Jackson and form a fictitious historical narrative that legitimized the racist policies of the time. Their continued existence in our public spaces is an affront to Black people everywhere. 

We inherited this racist propaganda. Do we want to pass it on to the next generation?

Of course, taking down these symbols in itself won’t change the mistreatment that Black people still endure from Lexington’s overwhelmingly White population and its overwhelmingly White institutions. But symbols have power. They reflect and shape our identities — both individually and collectively. Lexington’s love for Lee and Jackson actively encourages all of us to internalize White supremacy and to perpetuate the systemic violence against Black people that has existed in this country since the very beginning. 

We are making a choice every day we leave these symbols up. It is a choice to tell future generations: “we stand for racism.” It is a choice to say: “we care more about our dead defenders of slavery than we care about our Black neighbors.” 

We are demanding immediate change: the statues must come down and the buildings, streets, and institutions must get new names.