Charlottesville can remove the Confederate statues at the center of a 2017 White nationalist rally, Virginia court rules elisfkc2 / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 Two Confederate statues that sparked fiery protests and the fatal White nationalist rally in 2017 may soon come down in Charlottesville, Virginia. After years of thwarted attempts, Charlottesville can remove statues of Robert E. Lee and General “Stonewall” Jackson, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Efforts to remove both statues preceded the Unite the Right Rally in 2017, when thousands of White nationalists descended upon Charlottesville and killed a counterprotester. Two months after the rally, a circuit court ruled against removing the statues from public spaces, saying that they were protected by a state statute that barred the removal of “memorials and monuments to past wars,” court documents show.