Charlottesville unanimously votes to remove Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson statues

Two Confederate statues will be out of public spaces after Charlottesville leaders voted for their removal.

Nearly four years after white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, protesting a proposal to take down a Confederate statue, city leaders have unanimously voted to remove the Robert E. Lee monument -- and another. The Charlottesville City Council voted Monday night to remove the Lee statue from Market Street Park as well as a statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson from Court Square Park. The decision ends years of back and forth between leaders and statues' supporters, and legal challenges. In a statement released after the vote, the council said the statues' pending removal is "a major step forward toward telling a more complete history of our community." "We look forward to transforming our downtown parks by removing these racist symbols of Charlottesville’s past. There remains much work to be done in Charlottesville’s future as we work towards the goals of racial and economic justice, but this is an important milestone in that journey," the City Council said in a statement.