WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (WAVY) — The City of Williamsburg’s Confederate monument has come down.
Just one month after City Council voted to remove the monument from its location in Bicentennial Park, the monument was taken down Monday.
For now, the 20-foot-tall monument will be held in a storage facility, City of Williamsburg spokeswoman Nicole Trifone said.
City Council voted July 14 to move the monument with the agreement of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who originally contributed to the monument’s funding in 1908. The organization has a year and a half to find a new home for the monument.
If they do not find a new home by Jan. 31, 2020, the city can abandon the monument and dispose of it.
Confederate monuments continue to come down across the country in the wake of recent protests over racial inequity and police brutality, including in Richmond and Norfolk.
Leaders in Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Williamsburg, Newport News and Pasquotank County, North Carolina, are some localities in the region that have already voted to relocate their monuments.
Under Virginia law, localities need to hold a public hearing ahead of the vote to remove, relocate, alter or change their monuments. After that, there’s another 30-day period in which they must solicit proposals for museums, historical societies, governments or military battlefields to take ownership of the monuments.
