Tuesday, July 13, 1999
By GORDON HICKEY
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

The four elected members of the committee studying images to be displayed along the downtown Canal Walk fired a warning shot at City Councilman Sa'ad El-Amin, who promptly fired back.

The four -- state Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, Dels. Viola O. Baskerville and Dwight Jones, and Richmond Mayor Timothy M. Kaine -- together said they support the committee's work and will stand behind the images that were on public display last week. And they essentially told El-Amin to back off.

El-Amin arrived in City Hall about an hour later and said he won't retreat. He received an opinion from the city attorney yesterday that said the City Council owns the floodwall and has the right to control anything hung there, including the gallery.

El-Amin then introduced a proposed ordinance last night asserting the council's authority over the floodwall images and calling for the removal of all of them. That ordinance would force the council to hold a public hearing on the matter in two weeks.

That is exactly what El-Amin said he wants.

"For the first time, we'll have a public hearing," he said. "I don't see how the work of the committee could be undermined. It's all been done in secret."

The committee of 19 civic, religious and political leaders that was formed by the Richmond Historic Riverfront Foundation met three times in secret, andthey discussed the images to be included in the 13 murals that will line the floodwall that separates the James River from the Canal Walk.

The images were put on public display in the Richmond Centre through Sunday. About 1,100 people viewed them last week.

Kaine said more than 800 people responded in writing to the proposals. Though none of the committee members would characterize the responses, one source said they were overwhelmingly in favor of the images.

Yesterday, Marsh added his name to the backers.

"I support the revised panels," he said. "I think they represent a significantly improved display."

He said he doesn't like having a portrait of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the wall, but he would live with it. He pointed out the wall also now includes images of federal Judge Spottswood Robinson and Powhatan Beaty, a black Civil War hero for the Union forces.

Other images include those of Chief Powhatan, William Byrd II, Chief Justice John Marshall, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Moses Ezekiel, John Mitchell, Edgar Allan Poe, Maggie Walker and Abraham Lincoln.

It was El-Amin's opposition to a different portrait of Lee -- the new one shows him out of uniform and outside his residence on Franklin Street -- that set off the battle on June 2.

El-Amin saw a photograph of Lee's mural on the front page of The Richmond Times-Dispatch and lobbied the Richmond Historic Riverfront Foundation to take it down.

Those who run the Canal Walk agreed to remove Lee's image, which set off a new fight pitting the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other Lee supporters against El-Amin and his backers.

El-Amin's supporters include a group of religious and community organizations that met Sunday. The group, the Ad Hoc Committee on Justice, said the council should use its authority over any display on the floodwall and council members should vote to keep the wall bare.

The council has previously decided by a straw poll of members that it won't intervene in the issue.

Yesterday, Jones said, "I certainly understand the emotional dimension of the dialogue we've had." He said Lee's portrait reminds some people of slavery. "It's painful for all of us as African-Americans to remember what could have happened."

But he added, "It's time for us to recognize that the war has been fought, that the battle is over."

Instead of looking to the past, he encouraged the city to look to the future. "Use our energy to bring back some wealth to this community."

Kaine called the new murals "a vast improvement over the original product." He said the committee that will make a recommendation to the Richmond Historic Riverfront Foundation is much more balanced than the first group that decided to put up Lee and the other images.

El-Amin, though, continued to insist that it would be best to scrap the whole thing -- "take it all down." He said there are four slave owners included in the proposal and added that is unacceptable.

Marsh said the gallery should go up. "To abandon the process is to say we can't work this out, we've given up. I don't believe in giving up."

Baskerville said it would "deny us an opportunity to wrestle with our ghosts."

Jones said he didn't blame El-Amin for starting the fight over Lee that has blossomed into a full-blown debate on the national stage over racial relations in the city. "I'm grateful for the intervention. A person took civic responsibility to raise an issue."

Marsh said The Times-Dispatch should take some of the blame, or credit, for inciting the fight by putting Lee's picture on the front page with no context or explanation of the rest of the gallery.

"I think if Sa'ad [El-Amin] had not raised the issue, other people would have raised it."