Five years after Richmond saw its controversial monuments fall , some symbols of the Confederacy still remain in the rebellion’s former capital.

At least one of those symbols was recently enhanced at the expense of Richmond taxpayers.

Records show city officials in 2023 spent around $16,000 to upgrade a Confederate marker, located on Wise Street in Manchester, that pays tribute to more than 100 Confederate soldiers from South Carolina who died in a temporary, wartime hospital across the street.

The memorial was placed on city property outside a Department of Public Utilities facility in 1939 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The upgrades, first reported by the Richmond Free Press , included landscaping, fencing and a new bench.

Records show city officials in 2023 spent around $16,000 to upgrade a Confederate marker, located on Wise Street in Manchester. The memorial was placed on city property outside a Department of Public Utilities facility in 1939 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Is marker a gravesite?

It’s a pretty stark contrast with Richmond’s Confederate statues, which fell in 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the social unrest that followed. Half a decade and one mayoral administration later, officials are weighing “next steps” for the marker, according to Julian Waker, a spokesperson for Mayor Danny Avula.

That process includes determining whether the marker is actually a grave, Walker said.

“The city has retained a vendor to conduct ground-penetrating radar testing at the property to help verify if it contains burial shafts or evidence of human remains,” Walker said. That testing, which is set to occur in the next few months, will dictate how officials proceed.

“If human remains are found on the property, any decisions related to the fate of the site would by necessity be made in accordance with applicable state laws and standards,” Walker said.

State law outlines a permitting process for the excavation and removal of human remains at historical sites that are found outside of “formally chartered cemeteries.” Those permits are granted by the state’s Department of Historic Resources.

A July 1939 story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch suggests that the small plot was indeed a burial site at one point. The newspaper at the time reported that “workmen excavating the South Richmond gas booster site uncovered several bodies there.”

“It is believed that many Confederate soldiers from South Carolina are still buried in the vicinity,” the reporter wrote.

That discovery prompted City Council to approve plans to erect “a simple stone memorial (at) … the graves of unknown Confederate soldiers,” The Times-Dispatch reported in August 1939. Two months later, the paper covered the unveiling of the marker, which was dedicated “to the memory of the soldiers buried there.”

Asked about the 2023 investment in the marker, Walker said those funding decisions “pre-date the current administration” and were made “under previous city and DPU leadership.”

“We can’t speculate on how past decisions and thinking may have been reconciled with the broader effort to remove Confederate statues,” Walker said, but he added that “anecdotal information” indicates officials had enhanced the marker to “promote safety and integrity (and) accommodate other community considerations.”

A spokesperson for the lieutenant gubernatorial campaign of Levar Stoney, who was mayor at the time, declined to comment. Calls to the United Daughters of the Confederacy were not returned.

A confederate marker located on Wise Street in Manchester pays tribute to more than 100 Confederate soldiers from South Carolina who died in a temporary, wartime hospital across the street. A spokesperson for the mayor said the city is investigating whether the marker is actually a grave.

‘Just removing symbols doesn’t work’

Joseph Rodgers, president of the Richmond chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, made a distinction between the Confederate monuments and the marker on Wise Street.

While the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, for example, was a prominent, 60-foot statement — “haha, we’re in charge,” as Rodgers put it — symbols like the marker are more complex, because they honor the suffering of “the average person.”

“Those things aren’t necessarily celebrating the Confederacy, but acknowledging the loss of life on that land,” he said.

Lee would go on to become an icon, representing the Lost Cause mythos that downplayed the role of slavery in igniting the Civil War, and reflecting the racism of the Jim Crow era during which Lee’s Richmond statue was installed.

The dozens of dead Confederate soldiers, on the other hand, were “everyday people” whose lives were ruined by the conflict.

At the same time, Rodgers said it is critical to guard against romanticizing the Confederate cause by rewriting historical narratives.

“It is important to understand that the principal cause of the Confederacy was to protect the institution of slavery,” he said. So if remaining symbols advance a falsified, “whitewashed” version of events, they should be removed or modified to tell stories more accurately.

Ultimately, Rodgers said there are probably “bigger fish to fry.” The actual goal should be telling the whole, true story of slavery and racism in America.

“We’ve done a lot of symbol removal, and I think that was important at the time,” he said. “But just removing symbols doesn’t work.” That’s because, depending on who’s in power, they can “always just be put back up.”

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This stor y was produced by Arbor and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.