By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration has removed language that criticized a memorial to the Confederacy that previously stood at Arlington National Cemetery, according to archived versions of its web page.
Among the removals was a line that said “the elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”
The Confederate Memorial was a 32-foot bronze statue unveiled in 1914 and removed from the military cemetery in 2023.
The memorial was among scores of statues erected decades after the U.S. Civil War, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Southern states imposed segregation laws. Historians have said the memorials were tied to efforts to promote the “Lost Cause” narrative of the Confederacy and were seen by many as monuments to racism.
Many were singled out for demolition by state and local leaders around the U.S. after a nationwide public uproar stirred in 2020 by the killing of George Floyd.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said last year the statue would be reinstalled at Arlington National Cemetery and criticized its removal in the first place that he attributed to a “woke” outlook.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has targeted U.S. cultural and historical institutions — from museums to monuments to national parks — in what critics say is part of a larger campaign to present U.S. history from a conservative view.
Historians and civil rights advocates say such steps risk reversing social progress, and undermine the acknowledgement of critical phases of U.S. history. Trump says he is combating what he calls “anti-American ideology.”
Congress formally mandated elimination of all names, symbols and statues commemorating the Confederacy throughout the U.S. military in 2021, creating a commission to oversee the endeavor.
The monument features a classically robed woman cast in bronze representing the American South standing atop a three-story pedestal adorned with life-sized figures of deities, Confederate soldiers and civilians.
Among those figures are an enslaved African American “mammy” character holding the infant child of a white Confederate officer, and an enslaved African American man following his owner off to war.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington)
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