Steve Burns
WMAL.com

LEESBURG – (WMAL) A prominent Republican on Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors is now on board with moving the county’s statue of a Confederate soldier sitting outside the county courthouse in Leesburg.

Supervisor Ron Meyer (R-Bull Run) told WMAL the county needs to ask for permission from the General Assembly to move the statue, and then he would like to see it placed in a nearby battlefield.

“Those who have Confederate soldiers in their lineage can go make sure they’re properly memorialized,” he said. “But at the same time, people who are of the lineage of those who were enslaved in Loudoun also don’t have to walk by a statue of the Confederacy going to our courthouse.”

Republicans, Meyer said, have consistently shown values that would lead to opposing the glorification of the Confederacy.

“Republicans are the party of Lincoln, the party of civil rights, the party that opposed Jim Crow, and certainly the party that opposed the Confederacy and preserving the institution of slavery,” he said.

Supervisors Chairwoman Phyllis Randall has also advocated for moving the statue, and said last week it should be a priority of the body to ask Richmond to cede authority in the debate.

Meyer said he also opposes destroying monuments, so he and Randall are advocating to move the statue to Falls Bluff Battlefield.

“I think it’s an absolutely appropriate place to learn history, to remember history, and to honor those who were fallen during the Civil War.”

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