Reminder that these statues weren't built to commemorate history
I don't know why I'm even bothering to make this comment when I know I'll be mass downvoted and probably ignored but:
These specific statues were not racist.
They were not meant to terrorize black people.
Just because other people made statues with racist intent does not mean all statues that have to do with the Confederacy are racist.
These statues were commissioned by a local philanthropist that sought to enrich the cultural experience of Charlottesville.
Specifically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Goodloe_McIntire
There is absolutely zero evidence of racism in any of his work, and very little of it has anything to do with the Confederacy. He seems to have been a very art-history-culture minded person.
He also:
Contributed the endowment of the chair of Fine Arts to the University of Virginia, with the explicit goal of enriching the Charlottesville cultural experience
Wrote to then-President Edwin Alderman that he hoped that "the University will see its way clear to offer many lectures upon the subject of art and music, so that the people will appreciate more than ever before that the University belongs to them; and that it exists for them.
Gaveaway so much of his fortune that he "was struggling to live within his annuity of $6,000."
Made a $200,000 gift establishing a school of commerce and economics, the McIntire School of Commerce, in 1921.
Created the seventh Greek-style outdoor theatre in the United States with a $120,000 gift in 1921, intended as an outdoor performance space.
Donated $50,000 toward a new building for the University Hospital in 1924
Made gift of $75,000 for the study of psychiatry,
$100,000 for cancer research;
$47,500 for the purchase of Pantops Farm,
Financed of a concert series in Old Cabell Hall
Gifted a rare books collection to the library and nearly 500 works of art to the University of Virginia Art Museum.
Financed a set of four public sculptures, George Rogers Clark, Thomas Jonathan Jackson, Robert Edward Lee, and Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, through the National Sculpture Society
Was a recipient of the French Legion of Honor in 1929 for his founding of a children's tuberculosis hospital in France for refugees from the German-occupied north.