A Confederate statue is again at the center of controversy in Charlottesville, Virginia. After a heated session, the Charlottesville City Council voted unanimously late Tuesday night to remove a monument dedicated to Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
The Stonewall statue removal will be part of the city’s redesign of Emancipation Park, where it currently resides. It remains unclear when the statue will be removed, however. The city council is still facing a lawsuit over its right to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee—it was this removal that sparked the white supremacist protests in the Charlottesville in August—by the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ Virginia organization. But if the court rules in the council’s favor, then both monuments will be taken down.
Earlier Tuesday night, a public hearing was marked with tension, as audience members criticized the council over last month’s white supremacist violence that left three dead and dozens more injured. Some called for council members to resign, while others held signs demanding the removal of all the city’s Confederate statues, the Washington Post reports.