The National Park Service (NPS) has announced plans to reinstall a bronze statue of Confederate General Albert Pike in Washington DC, nearly five years after it was toppled and set on fire during Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020. The statue, which was the only monument to a Confederate general in the US capital, is currently undergoing restoration, with a target reinstatement date of October.
The NPS stated that the restoration aligns with federal historic preservation laws and recent executive orders, including one issued by President Donald Trump in March calling for 'restoring truth and sanity to American history'. The move is part of a broader Trump administration effort to restore monuments removed since 2020, and the Pentagon has similarly reinstated Confederate names to army bases.
The statue of Albert Pike, a Confederate general and prominent Freemason, had been a source of controversy for decades. Civil rights activists and local officials in DC had long campaigned for its removal, citing Pike's alleged role as a founder of the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan—a claim disputed by the Masons. The statue was originally erected in 1901 in Judiciary Square, near the US Capitol, after Masons successfully lobbied Congress for land.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington DC's non-voting House delegate, has announced plans to reintroduce legislation to remove the statue and donate it to a museum. 'The decision to honor Albert Pike by reinstalling the Pike statue is as odd and indefensible as it was the first time,' she said in a statement, arguing that Confederate statues belong in museums as historical artifacts, not in public spaces that imply honor.
