You could have predicted this one. Yesterday, The Virginia Flaggers voiced their opposition to the removal of the 40-foot-tall pedestal, that once served as the base for the Robert E. Lee monument on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, with a flyover and banner that read, “God Bless Robert E. Lee.”
By the looks of their Facebook page they are none too pleased with their little spectacle. I guess in times like these you embrace what victories you can muster, even if they are largely meaningless.
As I’ve suggested before, it can’t be easy being a Virginia Flagger right now. In their 10-plus years of existence they have been unable to stem the tide of Confederate flag and monument removals from public spaces. They have lost every step of the way, in Lexington, VA, where both Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are buried. Even in small communities like Mechanicsville, they are no longer allowed to carry the Confederate flag in its annual Christmas parade. We learned just this past week that the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville will be melted down by the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and repurposed.
In the former capital of the Confederacy of Richmond, the Flaggers have met with complete failure. The monuments that once dominated the city are gone. I never thought that these monuments would fall, even after the initial wave of protests began following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. I can only imagine what Susan Lee and the rest of the gang have experienced.
No number of Confederate flag dedications along Virginia’s highways or flyovers in Richmond will do anything more than symbolize a Lost Cause that continues to lose in the public sphere. And this is the point that the Flaggers will never understand.
The Flaggers can continue to dedicate new Confederate flags on private property and pay people to fly their banners. That is a right they enjoy as citizens of the United States. None of this, however, will result in the return of a single monument. In fact, it is all but guaranteed that the monuments will continue to come down across the Commonwealth and beyond.
The Virginia Flaggers didn’t just lose, they never got up to bat.