President Donald Trump plans to bring a statue of a Confederate general back to the heart of the nation’s capital.
The likeness of Gen. Albert Pike, which stood outside the Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters in Washington, D.C., had ropes slung around its neck before it was yanked from its plinth and set alight during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Pike, a Confederate army general who championed the secession of the South, had worked with Native Americans from tribes that owned slaves and joined with the Confederacy to defend slavery during the Civil War. The statue honoring Pike, standing about a mile from the White House, had long been denounced before it was removed.
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The National Park Service announced Monday that the bronze monument will soon return to its old spot in Judiciary Square, as crews finalize a refurbishment.
The agency aims to have the statue standing by October, according Trump’s executive orders designed to, in the president’s eyes, restore “truth and sanity to American history.” The Confederacy never conquered D.C., and the District of Columbia Council called for the statue to be removed in a 1992 resolution before renewing the demand in 2017.
Critics of the statue also cited claims that Pike joined the Ku Klux Klan when the war ended, according to The New York Times, though historians say the claim cannot be conclusively proven. Pike, who was also a prominent leader of the Freemasons, was known to oppose racial integration in Masonic lodges.
He also wrote in 1868 that the “white race, and that race alone, shall govern this country. It is the only one that is fit to govern, and it is the only one that shall.”
“Site preparation to repair the statue’s damaged masonry plinth will begin shortly, with crews repairing broken stone, mortar joints and mounting elements,” the National Park Service said.
The move has rankled many, including D.C.’s delegate to the House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton. The veteran Democrat, 88, told the CBS affiliate WUSA on Monday that the statue should become an artifact rather than being displayed publicly.
“I’ve long believed Confederate statues should be placed in museums as historical artifacts, not remain in locations that imply honor,” she said.
“President Trump’s longstanding determination to honor Confederate General Albert Pike by restoring and reinstalling the Pike statue is as indefensible as it is morally objectionable,” she added.
Norton also said she will resurrect a bill that would “permanently remove the statue of Pike and authorize the Secretary of the Interior to donate the statue to a museum or a similar entity.”
“A statue honoring a racist and a traitor has no place on the streets of D.C.,” she said.
Norton and many others have argued that Pike “served dishonorably” and noted that he “took up arms against the United States [and] misappropriated funds.”
His work to preserve slavery along with the Confederates has placed him in the crosshairs of modern protesters, but Trump has previously argued that “both the good and the bad” parts of history should be remembered with public artworks.
Jason Charter, a D.C. local who was arrested by the FBI for allegedly dousing the statue with lighter fluid before setting it alight, responded angrily to the news that it will return.
“I did not get arrested by the FBI, so that statue could go back up,” he tweeted on Monday.
The move comes as part of a sweeping Trump campaign to restore Confederate iconography across public spaces and the military.
Earlier this year, the president ordered the Pentagon to reinstate the names of Army bases originally named after Confederate generals—names that had been stripped during the racial reckoning that followed the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. Trump also signed an executive order demanding that monuments taken down during those protests be restored.
White House special assistant to the president Lindsey Halligan told the Daily Beast that the statue was “removed under ideological pressure.”
“Thank you to the National Park Service for announcing the restoration of the Albert Pike statue after it was unlawfully toppled and vandalized,” she said.
She added: “Erected in 1901 and funded entirely by private Masonic organizations, the statue stood for over a century as a tribute to Pike’s contributions as a scholar and Masonic leader.
“Such action aligns with President Trump’s Executive Order 14253, which calls for reinstating monuments removed under ideological pressure. It’s encouraging to see our National Park Service stand up for historical preservation, due process, and the rule of law.”
