WASHINGTON—The statue of a Confederate general in the District of Columbia was restored over the weekend, after being toppled and set on fire during the 2020 George Floyd riots.
The monument to Confederate General Albert Pike, which sits in Washington’s Judiciary Square, was reinstalled on Oct. 26. The National Park Service in August had signaled it would replace the statue, which was originally erected by Scottish Rite Freemasons in 1901 to honor Pike for his contributions to the organization.
The restoration aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive orders restoring controversial historical monuments, the agency said in a statement.
“George Washington was a slave owner,” the president said at a press conference following a 2017 violent protest surrounding the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
“Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?”
Rep. Eleanor Holmes-Norton, Washington’s nonvoting congresswoman, called the reinstallation of Pike’s monument “morally objectionable.”
In August, she reintroduced legislation that would permanently remove Pike’s statue from Judiciary Square and place it in a museum. Holmes said she opposes destroying Confederate monuments, because she wants to avoid “erasing an important part of history from which Americans must continue to learn.”
The summer following the death of George Floyd in May 2020 was marked by riots, and Pike’s memorial became the target of vandalism. It was one of over 80 statues of Confederate figures removed that year, although most of those came down with the consent of local government leaders.
Jason Charter, 25, of Washington, was later charged with destruction of federal property after the statue came down, but those charges were dropped.
The reinstatement of the statue also follows other initiatives by Trump to restore historical names that had been expunged from landmarks and buildings.
