: : In this June 1, 2020 photo, Black Lives Matter protesters surround the now removed Monument Avenue statue to Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart. (Photo: Crixell Matthews/VPM News) Richmond City Council is moving forward with selling or transferring the Confederate monuments taken down last year. In response to nightly racial justice protests in the city and beyond, Mayor Levar Stoney ordered the removal of all of Richmond’s public Confederate monuments and iconography in July 2020. By that point protesters had already toppled three Confederate statues: Jefferson Davis on Monument Ave., Williams Carter Wickham in Monroe Park, and the Howitzer Battalion memorial on VCU’s campus. Protesters also toppled a monument of Christopher Columbus in Byrd Park and threw the statue in the pond.