National Park Service to reinstall Confederate Albert Pike statue in DC

(CNN) — The US National Park Service will restore and reinstall the statue of a Confederate military officer in Washington, DC, after protesters toppled the monument five years ago.

“The restoration aligns with federal responsibilities under historic preservation law as well as recent executive orders to beautify the nation’s capital and re-instate pre-existing statues,” NPS said in a statement.

Pike was a senior officer in the Confederate States Army. The effort to bring back his Washington, DC, statue comes after protesters tore it down in the wake of the George Floyd protests against racism in 2020.

NPS said it plans to repair the statue’s “broken stone, mortar joints, and mounting elements,” with a target of October for completing its re-installment.

The NPS statement cites executive orders from President Donald Trump, saying the move supports his “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful” executive order, issued in late March, which created a federal task force whose mission includes “monitoring the district’s sanctuary-city status and compliance with the enforcement of federal immigration law.”

The statement also said the move supports Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” order, which appeared crafted in part to direct Washington, DC, museums to soften or distort discussions about the history and impact of racism in the United States.

One of the directives in the executive order instructs the US interior secretary to determine whether any statues or memorials in the department’s jurisdiction have been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” since January 1, 2020.

While some say Confederate monuments mark history and honor heritage, others argue they are racist symbols of America’s dark legacy of slavery.

The US army also said in June it would restore the names of seven army bases that previously honored Confederate leaders. The move came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved quickly to roll back name changes at other Army bases, such as Fort Bragg and Fort Benning.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents Washington, DC, criticized the move and said she would reintroduce a bill to permanently remove the statute and authorize the interior secretary to donate it to a museum or another entity.

“The decision to honor Albert Pike by reinstalling the Pike statue is as odd and indefensible as it is morally objectionable. Pike served dishonorably. He took up arms against the United States, misappropriated funds, and was ultimately captured and imprisoned by his own troops. He resigned in disgrace after committing a war crime and dishonoring even his own Confederate military service,” Norton said in a statement.

Pike was originally from Massachusetts and traveled South, eventually buying a newspaper in Arkansas. During the Civil War, he joined the Confederacy and led a regiment of Native Americans. After the war, he became a leader in the Freemasons. And it’s that group that erected his statue, in 1901.

Pike is known as a journalist, a writer and a poet. He rose to prominence as a Freemason, but there are some disputed allegations that he was involved with the Ku Klux Klan.