The Charlottesville City Council has decided on the fate of a recently demounted statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, choosing to melt it down and have a local African-American history museum create something more reflective of the city's diversity with its remains.
"We have had a number of issues with effective returns in criminal trials for reasons ranging from ingrained problems in our legal system that have to do with long histories of white supremacy, to all kinds of procedural problems that have derailed justice in one way or another," University of Chicago historian Kathleen Belew said in an interview with NPR. "Civil trials are a really good tool in hitting the pocketbooks and the membership lists of white power groups."Â
