After the weekend’s violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia the Lee County NAACP once again calls for Confederate symbols to be removed from Lee County. There’s a Robert E. Lee statue on Monroe Street in Fort Myers and a portrait of the Confederate General hanging in the Lee County commission chambers. The removal of a statue of Lee from a park in Charlottesville led to the white supremacist rally.
A statue was removed from New Orleans in May. And such statues are also being moved in Tampa and Lexington, Kentucky. Lee County NAACP President James Muwakkil tried previously to have the portrait removed from commission chambers but failed.
We’ll also get a history lesson on the man Lee County is named after from Associated Press writer Russell Contreras. He wrote an article yesterday titled, “AP Explains: How Robert E. Lee went from hero to racist icon”. Contreras is a member of the AP’s race and ethnicity team.
