A federal judge on Tuesday allowed Arlington National Cemetery to remove a century-old Confederate memorial one day after blocking the removal over a report that gravesites were disturbed. At a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, US District Judge Rossie Alston said he issued the temporary injunction Monday after receiving an urgent phone call from the memorial's defenders saying that gravesites adjacent to the memorial were being desecrated as contractors began work to remove the memorial. Alston said he toured the site before Tuesday's hearing and saw the site being treated respectfully, the AP reports.
"I saw no desecration of any graves," the judge said. "The grass wasn't even disturbed." Alston issued an 18-page opinion Tuesday evening to lift the injunction. Cemetery officials sought to have the injunction lifted quickly. They said that they are required by law to complete the removal by the end of the year and that the contractors doing the work have only limited availability over the next week or so. In a statement Tuesday evening, the cemetery said it "will resume the deliberate process of removing the Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery immediately. While the work is performed, surrounding graves, headstones, and the landscape will be carefully protected."
Defend Arlington, in conjunction with a group called Save Southern Heritage Florida, has filed multiple lawsuits trying to keep the memorial in place. The group contends that the memorial was built to promote reconciliation between the North and South and that removing the memorial erodes that reconciliation. Tuesday's hearing focused largely on legal issues, but Alston questioned the heritage group's lawyers about the notion that the memorial promotes reconciliation. He noted that the statue depicts, among other things, a "slave running after his 'massa' as he walks down the road. What is reconciling about that?" asked Alston, an African American who was appointed to the bench in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.
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