Be careful what you wish for …
A Republican state lawmaker in Virginia proposed legislation to take down a statue of a Democratic segregationist as a jab at efforts to remove Confederate monuments— then tried to scrap the bill when Democrats actually supported it, a report said Monday.
Irked over a push by state Democrats to remove statues of Civil War Gen. Robert E. Lee and other Confederate icons, GOP Delegate Wendell Walker introduced a bill backing the removal of a sculpture of former governor and US Sen. Harry F. Byrd from Richmond’s Capitol Square, according to the News & Advance.
Byrd served as a Democratic senator from 1933 to 1965. He was a staunch segregationist and the leader of the “massive resistance” campaign to the US Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling striking down school segregation.
“If we’re going to do this, then I’m going to request to remove the Harry Byrd statue,” said Walker, according to the News & Advance. “He was a Democrat and advocated for massive resistance.”
But Walker received support that he apparently never expected or even wanted, with multiple state Democrats backing his proposal.
“I’d love to vote for the bill,” said Delegate Mark Sickles of Fairfax, according to the News & Advance.
“I walk by the statue of him and think, ‘This is ridiculous,’ ” added Delegate Charniele Herring, Virginia’s House majority leader.
Walker tried to reverse course, admitting that he had no real desire for the statue of Byrd to come down, and that he was only trying to make a point about the push to pull down the monuments.
“I think history is very important, whether it’s good, bad or ugly,” Walker reportedly said. “I was not willing to allow the governor to have the opportunity to remove statues.
“The reason I put that in was more of a political reason.”
Walker tried to put the kibosh on his own bill, but the Democrat-controlled House Rules Committee refused, insisting that he appear before the committee at a later date to explain his stunt, according to the News & Advance.
The fight over the fate of monuments to Confederate leaders and other historical figures has played out across the nation, including in New York, where a plaque to Lee was uprooted from the grounds of a Brooklyn church in 2017.
