Tuesday, July 27, 1999
By GORDON HICKEY and CARRIE JOHNSON
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

Despite more than four hours of pleas against putting a portrait of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the floodwall gallery, the Richmond City Council decided to put his portrait up anyway.

The 6-3 vote came after the council soundly rejected Councilman Sa'ad El-Amin's proposal to remove all 13 murals from the floodwall, including the one containing Lee's image.

More than 50 people, most of them black, spoke out in support El-Amin's position; fewer than 10 were in favor of putting the murals on the floodwall.

But in the end, the council members agreed with Mayor Timothy M. Kaine, who said putting Lee on the floodwall would serve as a history lesson -- both good and bad -- for everyone.

"I'm not willing to accept that we're unable to have a meaningful discussion of the history of this city," he said.

El-Amin became outspokenly indignant as the council discussed the issue, charging his fellow members with lacking sensitivity for the feelings of the black citizens opposed to Lee's image.

"This is a defining moment," El-Amin said. "Everything's laid bare."

While arguing against Lee, he called for an end to the glorification of the Civil War in Richmond.

El-Amin also alleged that the public hearing was a waste of time because the decision had already been made to put up the murals.

"The white folks didn't come down because they knew the fix was in, and they didn't have to come down," El-Amin said.

That got Councilman John A. Conrad's dander up. "He knows damn well the fix wasn't in," he said.

"If you don't like it, that's tough," El-Amin countered.

"I don't like it," answered Conrad.

"That's tough," said El-Amin.

Every council member but El-Amin opposed his proposal. But Vice Mayor Rudolph C. McCollum Jr. and Councilwoman Delores McQuinn turned around and voted against El Amin's proposal to take them all down.

"I don't like Robert E. Lee. . . . We all know what the man did was wrong," McCollum said. "Let's keep some faces up there. . . . But let's say, 'Mr. Lee, you just don't cut it.' "

The hearing gave people a chance to vent before the nine members of the council had their say on whether to put Lee's portrait on the floodwall gallery along the downtown Canal Walk. The floodwall separates the James River from the canals and Shockoe Bottom and keeps out the floodwaters that until recently rendered the area almost useless.

But while that floodwall led to the revitalization of the canals and the Bottom, Lee's portrait stirred up a maelstrom of debate.

El-Amin protested having the portrait on the floodwall on June 2, and it was removed. He described Lee as akin to Adolf Hitler and said Lee should not be honored in public because he supported slavery by fighting for the Confederacy.

Later, an advisory committee of 19 civic, religious and political leaders recommended 13 murals with 34 separate images for the gallery. Those images included one of Lee standing outside his Franklin Street residence after the surrender at Appomattox.

The committee was selected by the Richmond Historic Riverfront Foundation, a private nonprofit group that is raising money to pay for the floodwall gallery and other exhibits along the Canal Walk.

Last night's public hearing filled the 260 seats in the council chamber. A small group of Lee supporters wearing "Put General Lee Back" lapel stickers sat in the front row.

El-Amin brought the crowd to a respectful silence with a heartfelt, sonorous explanation of his position against Lee and the other images on the wall.

He said he introduced his resolution at the request of a committee of 125 people who wanted the wall left blank. That group -- the Ad Hoc Committee on Justice -- was headed by the Rev. Roscoe Cooper.

"These citizens said they were tired and beleaguered by the divisiveness," he said. "This group had watched a city divide and cannibalize itself over the symbol of a dead man."

He said Lee, who supported "this peculiar institution" of slavery, "should not be put on a wall of respect." He said Lee "trafficked in human cargo and owned my people."

Speakers lined up early in the meeting to support El-Amin. Most said they felt the issue went beyond whether a mural of Lee is hung on the floodwall. Their often sad and bitter presentations spoke to the festering racial animosity that still exists in Richmond.

"This issue has been percolating for years," said Emmett Jafari. "We've been walking past each other making believe everything's all right."

Attorney Charles Chambliss said it is time for blacks in the city to "draw a line in the sand" and refuse to allow any more monuments to the Confederacy to be erected in the city.

He criticized the organizers of the Canal Walk, saying they failed to gather enough minority input. "And then to conclude the project by erecting a mural to Robert E. Lee is sort of a last slap in the face."

Donald Minor called Lee "a man who led the military forces that would have preserved slavery." He said Lee should have been arrested for treason.

The Rev. Robert Taylor, a member of the advisory committee that recommended putting Lee on the wall, said he was against it. He said that to adopt Kaine's position "would ignore the sensitivity of African-Americans."

While the vast majority of people speaking in favor of removing the murals were black, a few whites agreed.

Richard Lee Bland, an artist, said that when he saw the Lee mural, "It said to me, blacks are not welcome here." He made an emotional apology for slavery and suggested that trees and ivy be planted at the floodwall.

Carl-Henry Geschwind, who moved to the United States from Germany in 1982, said he was amused by the comparisons between Lee and Hitler. "The Germans realized they lost the war, and they realized they were wrong in fighting the war. I come to Richmond, and I say, these people have not realized they have lost the war."

Kevin Dawson, who is black, spoke in support of putting Lee on the wall. "He means nothing to me. He's already had his fall. He's already lost his fight.

"Robert E. Lee poses no threat to the black community."

THE VOTES

• The Kaine proposal to put up all the murals was approved 6-3.

• The El-Amin proposal to take down all the murals was defeated 8-1.