The bulk of a lawsuit seeking to stop a Charlottesville museum from melting down one of the city’s toppled Confederate statues was dismissed by a judge last week, narrowing a legal challenge over the monument’s future to a dispute over public records.
Leaders of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center say the ruling means they can continue moving ahead with their plans for the bronze statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which had served as the focal point of the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017.
The museum had won a bid to take over the statue from Charlottesville in December 2021 and then “disassembled” the monument upon taking ownership. It has been in storage in an undisclosed location as the museum looks to turn the metal into a new piece of public artwork.
“The lawsuit has always felt like an attempt to create a distraction from the overall project,” said Andrea Douglas, the museum’s executive director. “Our goal really is to engage in a conversation about public space — and how one makes those public spaces in the most democratic way possible.”
With the latest decision, “we’re getting there,” she added, though “we’re not there quite yet.”
The plaintiffs that filed the lawsuit are the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation, which runs a Civil War battlefield in Louisa County, Va., and the Ratcliffe Foundation, which manages a museum in Russell County, Va., linked to a Confederate general.
Both groups had submitted bids to the city for the Lee statue after it was toppled two summers ago and lost out to the Jefferson School. A judge removed the Ratcliffe Foundation from the case in May because its corporate status with Virginia had expired in 2015.
The ruling from Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. said the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation did not have standing to sue the city on two of its claims, in part because it submitted its bid for the statue too late.
But Peatross said that foundation can still sue the city on the claim that the city violated open-records laws as city council met over who should receive the statue.
Ralph E. Main Jr., a lawyer for the plaintiffs, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The legal team for the two foundations includes Jock Yellott, who was one of several plaintiffs who sued in 2017 to stop the city from taking down the Lee statue to begin with. Yellott declined to comment on the ruling.
The plaintiffs had filed their lawsuit just weeks after Charlottesville donated the Lee statue to the Jefferson School museum. Peatross tossed out the foundation’s claims that the city violated a Virginia law requiring public notice before removing war memorials and another on public contracts.
The museum was removed as a defendant but remains a party to the suit. Chris Tate, a lawyer for the museum, said it was evaluating its next steps before the court and remains optimistic that Jefferson School would be dismissed entirely as a party.
The remaining piece of the lawsuit is focused only on whether Charlottesville violated the state’s Freedom of Information Act. David Dillehunt, a spokesman for the city, declined to comment.
Douglas and other museum leaders have in recent months advanced their effort to melt down the Lee statue, dubbed “Swords into Plowshares.”
Last year, the museum launched an online survey and hosted public forums to consult Charlottesville residents on what form the bronze should take. That effort led to a set of guidelines for interested artists, which is set to be released in the coming weeks.
Douglas said Charlottesville residents consulted in those forums have expressed a desire to see the project result in an interactive and educational piece of art — perhaps one that honors well-known African Americans who helped develop the city.
Some possibilities, she said, include Benjamin Tonsler, the longtime principal of the Jefferson School, and Isabella Gibbons, who became the school’s first African American teacher after being born into slavery.
Once the museum finishes fundraising and receives proposal, it will create a shortlist of projects and again host forums for city residents to weigh in on the project.
By then, Douglas hopes, the lawsuit will be fully resolved.
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2023-07-18 21:22:14Z
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