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Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
WEDNESDAYS • July 15, 2020
Right: Hampton Mayor Tuck
Richmond & Hampton Roads
LEGACYNEWSPAPER.COM • FREE
As Confederate symbols come down, a Richmond church is removing its own, and leaving BLM graffiti EGAN MILLARD
ENS - Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America for most of its existence, is removing the Confederate monuments that have stood guard over its squares and streets for about a century. The street in front of City Hall now proclaims “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in giant yellow letters. And at the church once known as the Cathedral of the Confederacy, memorials to Confederate figures have been removed, while phrases like “I Can’t Breathe” and the names of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are spray-painted on the front steps – graffiti done after a Black Lives Matter march that the church is intentionally leaving there indefinitely. All of that sends a message, said the Rev. Charles Dupree, that “something’s got to change.” Dupree is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in downtown Richmond, a parish that has been at the center of debates around Confederate symbols in churches for years. The church began removing some of its Confederate memorials several years ago and recently removed more. At the same time, church leaders decided not to paint over the Black Lives Matter graffiti, at least for the time being, because they see it as “a meaningful statement, and that it was what we ought to do, considering our own history,” said Dupree. The church gained its nickname from its strong association with the Confederacy – the group of states that seceded from the Union, igniting the Civil War – during the time Richmond served as its capital, and in the decades afterward. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, was among its members; he and Confederate General Robert E. Lee worshiped there. The pews where they sat were marked with plaques in their memory, stained glass windows were dedicated to them and
This plaque honoring Jefferson Davis was one of the Confederate memorials removed from St. Paul’s in 2015. Courtesy photo the Confederate legacy was honored throughout the church in the form of memorial plaques on the sanctuary walls, some of which were adorned with the Confederate battle flag. That started to change in 2015, in the aftermath of the massacre of nine African Americans by a white supremacist at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. St. Paul’s launched the History & Reconciliation Initiative to examine the church’s legacy of white supremacy, including the decorative elements in
the building that honored it. Though the HRI’s work went far beyond discussions of symbols, in that same year the vestry voted to remove all memorial plaques with Confederate battle flags on them. The Rev. Melanie Mullen, The Episcopal Church’s director of reconciliation, justice and creation care, was serving at St. Paul’s during that time, and remembers the “cognitive dissonance” she felt as a black woman in that space. “It is a fabulous parish with wonderful liberal folks who are … big purveyors of racial justice, who since the ‘70s had stuck their necks out” on issues like integration and LGBTQ rights, Mullen said. “And yet worshiped in a place that received thousands of visitors a year who only wanted to look at the plaques. And they were everywhere. There were Confederate battle flags, there were needlepoint ‘stars and bars.’ “This is a church that really struggled to figure out what to do with its history and went through a deliberate process.” Several weeks ago, the church found itself deciding what to do about some very different race-related symbols: graffiti that was done on the front steps during a Black Lives Matter march on May 30. The church is adjacent to the Virginia Capitol, so marches often pass by it. The next day – Pentecost Sunday – Dupree went to the church to celebrate the livestream service and saw that buildings up and down the street had been tagged, including the church. “The Episcopal Church is so protective of our buildings,” said Dupree, “so that when we see it in any way other than we expect, it’s unsettling.” But statements like “I can’t breathe” and the names of African Americans killed by police didn’t strike Dupree and other church leaders as obscene or offensive, and they agreed that it didn’t seem
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