WASHINGTON (August 6, 2025)- The National Park Service announced Monday that the General Albert Pike statue that once stood near the U.S. capital will be restored and reinstalled. The statue was defaced and eventually forcibly removed by demonstrators during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. Albert Pike was a confederate diplomat and general who fought to protect slavery during the Civil War.
Experts at the George Washington University are available to provide context and analysis on these developments. To speak with an expert, please contact Skyler Sales at skylers
gwu [dot] edu (skylers[at]gwu[dot]edu).
Jesse Holland is an associate professor of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University. Professor Holland is an award-winning journalist and author of the first novel featuring comics’ most popular black superhero, The Black Panther. He is a former Race and Ethnicity writer for the Associated Press, having been recognized as one of the few reporters to be credentialed to cover all three branches of theAmerican government.
Matt Dallek is is a professor at the George Washington University School of Political Management. Professor Dallek is a political historian whose intellectual interests include the intersection of social crises and political transformation, the evolution of the modern conservative movement, and liberalism and its critics. He is also a frequent commentator in the national news media on politics, history and public affairs.
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