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The statue of a Confederate general that was toppled by demonstrators protesting the murder of George Floyd in 2020 has been reinstated in Washington, D.C., under orders from President Donald Trump. After sitting in storage for over five years, the statue of Albert Pike, a brigadier general and revered figure among Freemasons, returned to Judiciary Square, just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, on Saturday, WTOP News reported. The bronze statue of Pike was the sole outdoor statue of a Confederate military leader in the nation’s capital. It had been yanked to the ground with ropes and chains and set on fire on Juneteenth 2020, as nationwide protests erupted following the death of Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man killed in Minneapolis when a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck. Confederate statues around the country were toppled during similar protests, while several military bases named for Confederate leaders were given new names. The statue’s reinstallation “aligns with federal responsibilities under historic preservation law as well as recent executive orders to beautify the nation’s capital and reinstate pre-existing statues,” the National Park Service said in August announcing the the return. Two executive orders signed by Trump earlier this year prompted the statue’s return, including one called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” In this executive order, Trump ordered the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to determine whether, since January 2020, public statues and other monuments “have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology,” and to take action to reinstate these statues as appropriate. While Pike served in the Confederate military during the Civil War, he was best known for his decades-long stint as a senior leader of the Freemasons. In 1901, the Masons lobbied Congress for the right to erect the statue on National Park Service land — and asked that Pike be depicted in civilian, not military, attire. The statue specifically honors Pike’s 30-plus years as the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Scottish Freemasonry. Even still, Pike led a regiment for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and his statue has long been a sore subject. The Park Service notes on its webpage that the statue had “stirred opposition since it was first planned.” The D.C. Council had asked for the statue's removal in 1992. In 2017, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser struck a deal to eventually remove it, though its removal only occurred after it was knocked down. The statue is located on the corner of 3rd and D Street NW in a park by the headquarters of the D.C. police department. As of Sunday, the statue and two John Deere cherry pickers were surrounded by a chain link fence, according to WTOP. With reporting by the Associated Press.
