Monument Avenue

Uh, so it's the, a big loop.

So we have Monument Avenue here in-

Okay

...

talking about.

Monument Avenue.

The parts that aren't monuments to the Confederacy are...

The architecture is pretty.

Excuse me.

When I went to Richmond to live there, I think they changed the name of the street now, but it used to be called Monument Avenue.

And my mom, who was a, a Democrat, quite frankly, um, but she was still an old Southern gal, much respect for the Confederacy.

I used to say, "Broadcasting live from the former capital of the Confederacy," et cetera.

And I remember the first time I went to Richmond.

Sorry.

And we're driving down Monument Avenue.

There's Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson.

My poem was rejected for the campus scene against the Iraq war.

I watched the marchers protest down Monument Avenue, my train off the track scuttling down a cliff.

At some point, summer neared and I was silent with myself in a dark apartment and accepted an acceptance.

I thought, full steam ahead, like Dolly on Cat Stevens' Peace Train.

And when I was in the Navy, got out of the Navy and gained a little bit of weight and got a little chubby.

So I went and I signed up for the Monument Avenue 10K.

I think it was 2007.

Okay.

And so like when you, it's actually a good feeling when you think you can't do something and you end up either training yourself or like just getting better at something that you thought that you.

And

the Monument Avenue 10K is a great.

And you see them and you're just out there.

My parents live down the street from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, one of the great museums in this country, and I grew up going there on field trips, et cetera.

Kehinde Wiley has, I think, a couple pieces inside, but he, he now famously has the Rumors of War statue outside, which is a re-imagining of the Confederate monuments along Monument Avenue in Richmond that were taken down during the height of, of BLM.

Uh, you know, and it portrays a young Black man on a horse, uh, right outside.

So it launched, gosh, it must have been right in that same era, 2018, 2019, right before.

He has these old master poses.

He has all of these sort of floral arrangements i- in it.

I, I will sort of go back to, 'cause, uh, uh, it's always worth talking about, Kehinde Wiley went to the, uh, Virginia, to, uh, Richmond, for an event and stayed a week because he was so fascinated with Monument Avenue.

And before Monument Avenue became a political issue in, in BLM and the, the, they forced them to tear down and remove the statues, he intentionally stayed there, thought about, and came up with Rumors of War.

And it was just kind of like the sort of... historicalness of the moment, I think, was also kind of punctuated by the rain in a lot of ways.

You know, the most interesting thing about these three Confederate statues that used to be in Capitol Square is that so few people even knew that they were there, right? If you bring up the topic of Confederate statues, people assume that they've all been removed because Monument Avenue, they've all been removed.

But But there were these three in Capitol Square.

And I would frequently talk about this in Alexandria, where I live, because this is another little known fact.