Last evening the City Council of Charlottesville held nearly a 5-hour public meeting to consider establishing a commission to address the issue of removing or not removing the statue. Approximately 50 person gave their  three minutes, pro or con, views on the matter. Below is the message that I deliver to the Council.

Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council

I am Uriah J. Fields
Charlottesville

i want to add my voice to the chorus of Charlottesville citizens who are calling on members of the City Council to vote to remove the Robert E. Lee Statue from Lee Park.

Two years before the Korean War I served in a segergated Army.  Two years during the Korean War I served in an integrated Army. That was change.
Four days after Rosa Parlks was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a white person I joined other African American leaders in Montgomery to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After 381 days of boycotting buses and the Supreme Court decision that declare segregation on Montgomery buses to be unconstitutional buses in Mongomery were desegregated. That was change. 

It is time for a change to take place in Lee Park. It is time to remove the Lee Statue from the Park that it now  disgraces in our City. 

In my  letter, published in the Daily Progress (Sept 2, 2014) with the titled, "Cut Confederacy from Public Square," I stated and I quote,
       "There is a heroic-size bronze statue of
        Robert E. Lee on a horse in Lee Park .
        ....every time I visit Lee Park I am
        reminded of the role Lee had in
        bringing suffering and death and
        causing African Americans to
        struggle to achieve the rights
        enjoyed by white Americans."

In my subsequent letter,  published in the Daily Progress (July 2015) I called for the Confederate flag... and I will add the same for the Lee Statue... to follow Confederate money. Only people who want to see Confederate money can see it.

It was Apirl 9, 1865, 151 years ago this month, that Gen. Robert E Lee of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Union  Army Gen. Ulysses Grant.

The Lee statue was placed in the Park in 1924, ninety-two (92) years ago.

We of the third milllennium have the power to remove the Robet E. Lee Statue, the statue of a traitor and insurrectionist, from the Park and replace it with a monument that represents Charlottesville today where power is shared, diversity and goodwill relished, and all the people are represented.

To members of the Charlottesville City Council: I implore you to vote to remove the Robert E. Lee Statue that disgrace the central Park of Charlottesville and hasten the day when the Park will be representative of people who feel as I do
Thank you..

Uriah J. Fields.

Addendum

         President Barack Obama's Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced on April 20, 2016 that Harriett Tubman, a former slave, conductor of the "Underground Railroad" and an abolitionist, will be on the face of the $20 bill, replacing former President and slave owner Andrew Jackson who owned 300 slaves to work on his 1.050-acre Hermitmage Plantation. Jackson will be on the back of the $20 bill that Tubman will grace on the front.
         A lesson that can be taken from this heroic and timely act: Statues such as the Robert E. Lee Statue in Lee Park, Charalottesville, VA should be replaced with an African American. If slave owners' statues and similar icons must remain visible in the public domain, let them be on the back of statues that are graced on their front by  African Americans. Slave owners, like the  traitor,  insurrectionist and slave owner Robert E. Lee and slave owner Andrew Jackson brought much suffering  and death to African Americans. Their legacies are evidenced in the plight of many African Americans today who live in poverty, are incarcerated, uneducated and jobless.

{Pass this link on to other people who have a right to know the truth.}

Copyright 2016 by Uriah J. Fields