“I literally felt lighter when the statues came down, it was such a relief,” said Jalane Schmidt, a Charlottesville resident and academic who turned out to witness. Schmidt, who is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, said the statues, put up in the wake of the civil war to honor the leaders of the southern rebellion that aimed to maintain the enslavement of Black people, are “propaganda art, an attempt by white civic leaders to enshrine a view of the civil war that denied the humanity of Black people. They are a visual representation of white supremacy.”