National Park Service will restore, reinstall toppled statue of Confederate General in DC
The National Park Service has announced it will restore and reinstall a Confederate statue in the District’s Judiciary Square neighborhood.
The statue of the Confederate General and Freemason Leader Albert Pike was brought down and burned in June 2020 by demonstrators amid protests in D.C. over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In a news release, the park service said the decision to both repair and bring the statue out of storage comes as part of executive orders to “beautify the nation’s capital and reinstate pre-existing statues.”
The agency specified it was the result of both the “Executive Order on Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful” and the “Executive Order on Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
The goal of bringing the Pike statue back, according to the park service, is to “protect public monuments and present a full and accurate picture of the American past.”
When the statue was brought down, President Donald Trump was critical of D.C. police for “not doing their job as they watch a statue be ripped down & burn.” The president called the actions of those who vandalized the statue a disgrace to the country.
The statue that sits near 3rd and D streets NW — in a park between the D.C. police headquarters and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Frances Perkins Building — has been a source of controversy for decades.
While some over the years have defended the statue as something that honored Pike’s postwar contributions to Freemasonry, critics claimed it celebrates a Confederate figure who supported slavery and was a leader in the Confederate army.
In 2017, several D.C. Council members penned a letter to the National Park Service calling for its removal and in 2021, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton first introduced legislation in Congress to remove the statue.
“I’ve long believed Confederate statues should be placed in museums as historical artifacts, not remain in parks and locations that imply honor,” Norton wrote in a statement responding to the decision.
“The decision to honor Albert Pike by reinstalling the Pike statue is as odd and indefensible as it is morally objectionable.”
Norton said she plans to reintroduce her bill, which would remove the statue and direct the Department of the Interior to donate the statue to a museum.
Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Grand Commanders Jim Cole told WTOP in a statement that the statue was commissioned to celebrate the Masonic and civic achievement of Pike, over 100 years ago.
“That statue was at that time gifted to the people of the United States. The Federal government, as the entity representing the owners of the statue, is fully responsible for its care and display,” Cole said.
The park service said the statue has been in secure storage and is undergoing restoration by the agency’s Historic Preservation Training Center.