President Donald Trump plans to bring back a statue of a Confederate general to the heart of the nation’s capital.
The likeness of Gen. Albert Pike, which stood outside the Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters in Washington, D.C., had ropes slung around its neck before it was yanked from its plinth and set alight in Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Pike, a Confederate Army brigadier who championed the secession of the South, had worked with Native Americans from tribes that owned slaves and joined with the Confederacy to defend slavery during the Civil War. The statue honoring Pike, standing around a mile away from the White House, had long been denounced before it was removed.
The National Park Service announced on Monday that the bronze structure will soon return to the old spot in Judiciary Square, as crews finalize a refurbishment.
The agency aims to have the statue standing by October, per Trump’s executive orders designed to supposedly restore “truth and sanity to American history.” The Confederacy never conquered D.C., and the District of Columbia Council in Washington called for the statue to be removed in 1992 resolution before renewing the demand in 2017.
Critics of the statue also cited claims that Pike joined the Ku Klux Klan when the war ended, according to the New York Times, though historians say the claim cannot be conclusively proven. Pike, who was also a prominent leader of the Freemasons, was known to oppose racial integration in Masonic lodges.
“Site preparation to repair the statue’s damaged masonry plinth will begin shortly, with crews repairing broken stone, mortar joints and mounting elements,” the National Park Service said.
The move has rankled many, including D.C.’s delegate to the House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton. The veteran Democrat told the CBS affiliate WUSA on Monday that the statue should become an artefact, rather than being displayed publicly.
“I’ve long believed Confederate statues should be placed in museums as historical artifacts, not remain in locations that imply honor,” she said.
“President Trump’s longstanding determination to honor Confederate General Albert Pike by restoring and reinstalling the Pike statue is as indefensible as it is morally objectionable,” she added.
Holmes Norton also said that she will resurrect a bill which would “permanently remove the statue of Pike and authorize the Secretary of the Interior to donate the statue to a museum or a similar entity.”
“A statue honoring a racist and a traitor has no place on the streets of D.C.,” she declared.
Holmes Norton and many others have argued that Pike “served dishonorably” and noted that he “took up arms against the United States [and] misappropriated funds.”
His work to preserve slavery along with the Confederates has placed him in the crosshairs of modern protesters, but Trump has previously argued that “both the good and the bad” parts of history should be remembered with public artworks.
Jason Charter, a D.C. local who was arrested by the FBI for allegedly dousing the statue with lighter fluid before setting it alight, responded angrily to the news that it will return.
“I did not get arrested by the FBI, so that statue could go back up,” he tweeted on Monday.
The move comes as part of a sweeping campaign to restore Confederate iconography across public spaces and the military.
Earlier this year, Trump ordered the Pentagon to reinstate the names of Army bases originally named after Confederate generals—names that had been stripped during the racial reckoning that followed the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. He also signed an executive order demanding that monuments taken down during those protests be restored.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
