By Leonard E. Colvin
Chief Reporter
New Journal and Guide
Two African American political leaders are criticizing Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointment of a historian to the state Board of Historic Resources who has defended the state’s Confederate monuments and condemned their destruction as a “dangerous” rewriting of history.
On July 19, U.S. 4th District Congressman A. Donald McEachin issued a statement after Governor Youngkin appointed historian Ann Hunter McLean to the agency’s Board.
“If there was any doubt that Governor Youngkin is an extremist, right-wing politician, here is another example of his inflammatory priorities in action,” the Congressman said. “Since taking office, his appointments have been divisive and contradictory to our values in the Commonwealth. “
“His latest pick of Ann Hunter McLean demonstrates a frightening lack of cultural and social wherewithal to lead Virginians or steer our great Commonwealth forward effectively.”
“For years – and particularly in the wake of George Floyd,” said McEachin, “civil rights advocates, community leaders, and elected officials in Virginia fought to dismantle oppressive memorials and monuments that paid homage to the Confederacy.”
He said, “To appoint McLean, who has vocally defended Confederate statues and monuments since the late 1990s, to serve on the Board of Historic Resources shows a blatant disregard for Virginia’s and the work we have done as a state to rectify those long-standing harms.
“This appointment demonstrates a complete lack of understanding or empathy for the lived experiences of African Americans,” he continued. “Monuments to traitors have no place in our Commonwealth, and we will not allow Governor Youngkin or Ms. McLean to drag us backward.”
Hunter McLean who lives in Richmond and is a former head of a Christian school told an online publication she believes Virginia’s heritage is “under attack” as she begins serving on the board, which oversees state historic-site designations.
Last year, as the last vestiges of Richmond’s Confederate monuments were being taken down in the wake of social justice protests, McLean lamented the loss.
The Robert E. Lee statue was removed in Richmond after months of protest and legal resistance.
“This whole tragedy is that these statues were built to tell the true story of the American South to people 500 years from now,” McLean said during an interview with a radio station on Dec. 23, 2021, after state archivists opened a time capsule found under the site where the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee once stood on Richmond’s Monument Avenue.
“People want to destroy the evidence of that story,” she continued, saying the Civil War was fought for the “sovereignty of each state and constitutional law.”
Read the entire story in the New Journal and Guide
PIC: Courtesy
