On May 21, 1924, the City of Charlottesville, Virginia dedicated a bronze equestrian statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his horse Traveller in a location named Emancipation Park. In an open-air press conference beside the Robert E. Lee statue in March of 2016, Charlottesville, Virginia's vice mayor called on the Charlottesville City Council to remove the statue and rename the location Lee Park.
In April 2016, the City Council decided to appoint a special commission, named the Blue-Ribbon Commission on Race Monuments and Public Spaces, to recommend to city officials how to best handle issues surrounding statues of General Thomas Jonathan Jackson in Court Square and General Robert E. Lee in Lee Park, as well as other landmarks and monuments. Early in November 2016, the Blue-Ribbon Commission voted 6–3 to let both statues remain in place. On November 28, 2016, it voted 7–2 to remove the Lee statue to McIntire Park in Charlottesville and 8–1 to keep the Stonewall Jackson statue in place, delivering a final report with that recommendation to Charlottesville City Council in December.
On February 6, 2017, Charlottesville's five-member City Council voted three votes to two to remove the General Lee statue and, unanimously, to rename Emancipation Park as Lee Park. In response, a lawsuit was filed on March 20 by numerous plaintiffs, including the Monument Fund Inc, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and descendants of the statue's donor and sculptor, to block the removal of the Lee statue and another of Stonewall Jackson that the city also plans to remove. The lawsuit sought a temporary injunction to halt the removal, arguing that Charlottesville City Council's decision violated a state law designed to protect American Civil War monuments and memorials of the War Between the States, and that the council had additionally violated the terms of the gift to Charlottesville of the statue and the land for Lee Park. The city responded by asking that the temporary injunction be denied, arguing that the two statues were not erected to commemorate the Civil War and therefore the Virginia statute protecting war monuments did not apply.
In April 2017, the City Council voted three to two that the statue be removed completely from Charlottesville and sold to whoever the Council chooses. On May 2, 2017, the court issued a temporary injunction blocking the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue for six months, in the public's interest, pending a court decision in the suit.
Following several highly publicized protests around the statue and in Emancipation Park, the actions related to August 12, 2017 occurred, causing the senseless death of a young lady and injuring dozens more through a despicable perpetrated by one of those protestors. As a result, heightened awareness surrounding the rising demonstration of instances of racism and hate, has led to the removal of statues in cities across the United States. Maryland, with particularity to Annapolis, the State’s Capital, and Baltimore City, has not been immune from this taking place.