The Monumental Project
Welcome to The Monumental Project: How Historic Sites and Monuments of Yesterday Affect Us Today. As the official companion podcast of the Monuments Toolkit program, we will be diving deep into the pieces of American history found across the nation, and how the stories they carry impact the modern day American citizen. The goal of this podcast and the program at large, is to address the question “how do we address monuments of oppression?” What are our options for dealing with painful pieces of our past? How can we learn, heal, and move forward? By the end of this season we’ll have a better understanding.
The Monumental Project
Conversations with Mayor Levar Stoney
After the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, citizens of Richmond, Virginia took to the streets to address their problematic statues of confederate figures. Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, Matthew Fontaine and later Robert E. Lee all came down, some from the hands of protesters themselves. To many individuals in Richmond and spectators around the world, this was a wake-up moment in the field of oppressive monuments. Things can change before our very eyes if we speak up and let people know how we feel.
A seminal figure in this entire situation was none other than Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney. As the 80th mayor of Richmond, Virginia, Mayor Stoney was in office in 2020 while all of this was happening.
The Monuments Toolkit had the pleasure of sitting down with Mayor Stoney in Richmond for a great 1-on-1 conversation. We spoke about the protests from 2 years ago, the history of Monuments Avenue and steps to reconciliation.