April 02, 2021

Gregory S. Schneider, The Washington Post

“The Supreme Court of Virginia has cleared the way for the city of Charlottesville to take down the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was the focus of 2017’s deadly Unite the Right rally, and the ruling appears to open the door for statue removals around the state. …”

“The news made a happy day for Zyahna Bryant, who spearheaded the first petition to remove the Lee statue five years ago, when she was in ninth grade. Now a second-year student at the University of Virginia, Bryant said the court’s ruling was a ‘full-circle’ moment for her.

‘I feel almost overwhelmed, because around this time in 2016 is when we were, like, pushing the petition and organizers were trying to get people to even have that conversation,’ she said.

Now Bryant said she is looking ahead to not only rethinking the public spaces around the monuments but pushing the city to tackle problems of housing and education that the statues only symbolize.”

Read more about Zyahna Bryant’s story from AWTT.

Read the full story here.