Finalists will present their designs for recasting the melted down fragments of Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue

Three finalist were selected among 32 entries in the Swords into Plowshares project.

This man spent about 15 minutes walking around the Lee statue venting his frustration during a KKK rally held the month before the infamous Unite the Right rally in 2017. “No KKK in my town, not where my kids live,” he shouted. “I see you all looking, I’m not crazy. This ain’t acceptable in 2017.”

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center has announced that three design firms competing to recast the two tons of bronze ingots that remain after Charlottesville’s monument of Robert E. Lee was melted down will present their proposal to the public on Saturday, March 14, at the center.

The three finalists were selected among 32 entries in the “Swords into Plowshares” project, launched after the 2021 removal of Charlottesville’s Confederate statues, which is “devoted to creating new public art in the city of Charlottesville to advance multiracial democracy in relation to global sites of memory.”