Richmond, you might know is embroiled in a controversy over its Civil War monuments. Yesterday I took a walk by two statues on Monument Avenue. On the top you see Arthur Ashe, the much admired Black tennis star who grew up in segregated Richmond long after the Civil War, and on the bottom we have the base of the statue of Admiral Matthew Fontaine Maury who commanded the Confederate navy. He was also a cartographer and oceanographer and so didn’t have the reputation for war quite as well known as Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart or Jefferson Davis, but it was time for them all to go. The Lee statue is still embroiled in a legal challenge, but I assume they will all be replaced in the near future. The next challenge is: What will take their place?
