Virginia lawmaker says it’s time to scrap the official Robert E. Lee license plate

Over the last few years, many Virginia officials have made it clear they don’t want the state to officially venerate Robert E. Lee anymore.

The massive, state-owned Robert E. Lee statue is gone from Richmond’s Monument Avenue. Other Lee statues were removed from both the Virginia Capitol and the Virginia section of the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Lee-Jackson Day is no longer one of Virginia’s official state holidays.

But there are still 1,766 vehicles in Virginia with government-issued license plates honoring Lee, a slave owner who commanded the Confederate army during the Civil War. The plate, one of hundreds of special designs motorists can purchase from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, calls Lee “The Virginia Gentleman.”

After a Northern Virginia constituent asked about the issue, Del. Candi Mundon King, D-Prince William, says it’s time for the license plates to go too. And she’s filed a bill to get rid of them.

“We are in an era where people want to rewrite history and they want to have an incorrect telling of what happened,” Mundon King said in an interview. “And when we promote things like that license plate, we are pretending that this is something admirable. And his actions, committing treason against the U.S., were not.”

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