(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)Democratic lawmakers and others urged official removal of Confederate monuments at the center of a politically fraught national debate, saying Tuesday that slow action was leading protesters to try to topple statues of defenders of slavery themselves.
A descendant of Confederate military commander Robert E. Lee was among those joining Black historians at a hearing of the House subcommittee on national parks, forests and public lands to urge passage of legislation addressing Confederate statues at national parks and other federal sites.
One of the bills would remove a statue of Lee erected this century at the battlefield of Antietam, the site of the deadliest day of fighting in the Civil War.
Robert W. Lee IV, a descendant of the Souths military leader in the Civil War, cited his forebears testimony before Congress after the Civil War as evidence of the Confederate leader's unfitness for commemorative monuments.
Trump increasingly has come out in defense of the Confederate statues and other historical tributes to the Civil Wars defeated side.