The rendering of a monument featuring a baobab tree, parts of it arranged to form a circle. Illustrated people are enjoying the space, which is shown from an aerial view with a brick building across a street that has white columns.
"Rooted," the MASS Design Group’s winning proposal, will replace the removed Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville's Market Street Park. The design, to be constructed from the melted remains of the Lee statue, features a baobab tree for its life-giving fruit and the symbolism of resilience, interconnection and shared knowledge, according to MASS Design Group. Credit: Design rendering courtesy of Model of Architecture Serving Society (MASS Design Group)

The Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee monument, removed in 2021 from Charlottesville’s Market Street Park, will be replaced by a 27-foot bronze baobab tree, known for its life-giving fruit and pan-African symbolism.

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center announced Friday, on the fifth anniversary of the statue’s removal, that MASS Design Group will create the new public work. Swords Into Plowshares, the community-driven public art initiative, is moving forward with a plan to repurpose the bronze from the removed Robert E. Lee statue. The decision follows a three-month community engagement process in which nearly 1,000 people ranked three final design proposals, with MASS Design Group’s project, “Rooted,” emerging as the top choice for 64% of respondents, according to a JSAAHC press release.

“Opportunities like this are extraordinarily rare,” said Jha D Amazi, principal of MASS’s Public Memory and Memorials Lab. “To transform the very material of a monument is to acknowledge that history cannot be erased, but it can be reimagined.”

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For Charlottesville, the announcement marks a decade-long process, which began in 2016 when then-15-year-old high school student Zyahna Bryant petitioned the Charlottesville City Council to remove the Lee statue. During the Aug. 12, 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, counter protester Heather Heyer was killed when James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters. Fields was convicted of first-degree murder in 2018. Additionally, two state troopers died in a helicopter crash responding to the scene, and 19 others were hospitalized.

Once the statue was removed, JSAAHC took possession of the monument to decide what should be done with a symbol that represented racial hierarchy. The statue was installed to advance the “Lost Cause” narrative.

MASS Design Group, JSAAHC and Swords Into Plowshares will now work with community members and Dana King, the sculptor behind the vision, to further develop the project. Public engagements and design changes will continue to ensure the new monument will be “both locally grounded and nationally resonant,” the press release said.

MASS Design Group’s work, which focuses on helping communities design landscapes, memorials and spaces of remembrance, is included in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

“One year after white supremacists attacked our city, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center led a 100-person delegation from Charlottesville on a pilgrimage to the national lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama,” said Jalane Schmidt, co-founder of Swords Into Plowshares, in the news release. “There we experienced first hand the powerful healing work of this design firm, MASS. We look forward to collaborating with MASS in the community engagement process to transform our public space to support our striving for multiracial democracy.”

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