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Richmond Circuit Court Judge Bradley B. Cavedo on Thursday granted an anonymous plaintiff’s request for a temporary injunction in a suit brought against Stoney Tuesday. The mayor ordered Richmond’s Confederate iconography removed beginning last week using his “emergency powers.” The statues, Stoney has said and his lawyers argued, were a threat to public safety.

After a solid month of day-and-night protests, all four Confederate statues on city-owned property along Monument Avenue are gone. Only the grandest and oldest monument — to Gen. Robert E. Lee, which towers 60 feet over state-owned land — remains. A judge has so far blocked Gov. Ralph Northam (D) from removing it.

It’s been invigorating and infuriating. The Lee statue’s fate is mired in litigation brought by those who want it to remain. I’ve heard arguments about diminished property values, but I wish there were greater concern about celebrating a cause that considered some of our ancestors as property. I’ve also heard concerns about an erased history. The last thing I want is history erased. Our history must be studied, absorbed and addressed if reconciliation and progress are in our future. That’s a far cry from a public celebration of a mythical past that imagines white Americans as the protagonists of the entire American story.

Melody Barnes, co-director of the Democracy Initiative at the University of Virginia, was director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama.

“I’m interested in seeing the bases remade because a base is a base and can be transformed into something else, and means something by itself,” said DiPasquale, who knew Hill and put forth his name for candidacy. “They are works of art in and of themselves, and by themselves they don't stand as a symbol like the Confederate statues do. They are beautifully carved pieces of stone.”

“Over the past month we’ve seen buildings and structures around Capitol Square vandalized and flags, dumpsters, a bus and other items set ablaze during demonstrations around the city,” Dena Potter, spokeswoman for the Department of General Services, said in an email Friday. “When we saw the flag, we were concerned that it could become a target so we told the contractor to remove it.”

The tribute to Maury is the most obscure of the five statues devoted to “Lost Cause” leaders in Richmond. Still, its dismantling was, to those gathered, a major milestone in the city’s long reckoning with its painful and divisive racial history. The monument showed a metal figure of Maury seated in front of a stone base, crowned by a large globe ringed by a frenzied, storm-tossed mix of waves, people, cattle and other animals.