The National Park Service announced Monday that it is restoring and will reinstall the statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike in Washington, which was vandalized and toppled during the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020.
Rioters pulled down the statue, not far from Metropolitan Police Department headquarters, on live TV in June 2020. President Donald Trump called for the statue to be reinstalled during his first term; his executive orders are to make it happen six months into his second term.
“The restoration aligns with federal responsibilities under historic preservation law as well as recent executive orders to beautify the nation’s capital and re-instate pre-existing statues,” the Park Service said in a statement.
NPS said the statue has been in “secure storage” and is being restored by its Historic Preservation Training Center. The NPS is targeting October for reinstallation.
“Site preparation to repair the statue’s damaged masonry plinth will begin shortly, with crews repairing broken stone, mortar joints, and mounting elements,” NPS said.
The Pike statue was authorized by Congress in 1898 and dedicated in 1901. It was built at the request of the Masons, who were granted land by Congress provided the statue depicted Pike in civilian clothing, not military. Pike was a longtime leader of the Freemasons.
It was brought down on Juneteenth in 2020 by BLM rioters. According to an NBC4 Washington reporter, who was covering the protests live, “People have spray-painted BLM, for Black Lives Matter, they have written Black Lives Matter on it, and they are continuing to try to pull this down.”
The work to reinstall Pike’s statue come as a result of Trump’s executive orders on Making DC Safe and Beautiful and Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.
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