The National Park Service (NPS) will restore and reinstall a bronze statue of a Confederate general that was toppled and burned during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, DC, the agency announced yesterday, August 4. The NPS said it will repair the effigy of Albert Pike in compliance with two executive orders issued by President Donald Trump directing federal agencies to reinstate historic monuments and memorials that have been dismantled or altered in recent years.
“The restoration aligns with federal responsibilities under historic preservation law as well as recent executive orders to beautify the nation’s capital and re-instate pre-existing statues,” the NPS said in its announcement.
In 2020, as the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice swept the nation, protesters in DC brought down the 11-foot-tall statue in Judiciary Square with ropes during Juneteenth, the federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. The sculpture was one of dozens of Confederate monuments and racist markers dismantled around the country in demonstrations sparked by the police killing of George Floyd and other Black individuals.
Originally from Massachusetts, Albert Pike sided with the South when the Civil War began, negotiating with Native American tribes that enslaved Black people to fight for the Confederate Army. In March 1862, while serving as brigadier general, his troops were accused of “scalping and defiling the bodies” of Union troops, forcing his resignation. He was later imprisoned and charged with misappropriating funds. In 1865, Pike was granted amnesty by President Andrew Johnson and reportedly became involved with the Ku Klux Klan.
Pike’s monument was the only outdoor statue of a Confederate official in the country’s capital, according to the NPS website. It was dedicated in 1901 by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite, an order of Freemasons, to honor Pike’s role in the fraternal society.
Michael Litterst, chief of communications for the National Mall and Memorial Parks, told Hyperallergic that the statue is currently undergoing repairs “to address structural deformation, stress cracks, and graffiti.” The NPS plans to reinstall the statue by October.
The announcement has been met with pushback from politicians and condemnation from racial justice organizers.
In an email to Hyperallergic, activist, politician, and journalist Eugene Puryear called the agency’s reinstallment of the statue a “disgraceful decision.” Puryear, along with local politicians and activists, advocated for the statue’s removal in 2017 following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
“Trump’s restoration of the Pike monument, and his broader campaign to restore Confederate imagery across the country, serve the same purpose as these statues did in the first place,” Puryear said, pointing to Confederate statues’ ties to the implementation of Jim Crow laws and the expansion of white supremacy in the early 1900s.
“Trump, and his aides, are seeking to restore these monuments in order to legitimize racism and white supremacy as ideological cover for their efforts to attack many of the historic gains achieved by the Black Liberation Movement since the 1950s,” Puryear said. “It shows that for Trump and the MAGA movement, racism is part of what they think made and will make America great.”
