From Staff Reports

A downtown Asheville monument honoring Confederate General Robert E. Lee has been defaced — again.

The bronze plaque depicting Lee on a horse, with an inscription below, is set in a granite stone a few yards from the Vance Monument in Pack Square, Asheville’s centerpiece.

The damage, first noticed March 30, is highly visible, as exposed bronze shines through the plaque’s patina. The vandal or vandals etched a bronze cloud over Lee’s face and crossed out almost every line of the inscription.

 The second vandalism to the monument in a year followed an incident in August, when a corner of the bronze plaque was pried up as part of a nationwide movement protesting the death of a counterprotester at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. The vandals were caught in the act by the police and sentenced to community service.

 Three of the four charged are affiliated with Asheville BeLoved, a group that advocates for social justice for African-Americans, ex-convicts and the LGBTQ community. Asheville BeLoved stopped at the Vance Monument while marching through downtown on the day the most recent vandalism was reported. 

During the rally, the names of hundreds of people the group said were sold into slavery at that very location were read aloud.

 Damage from the first incident has not yet been repaired, as Gov. Roy Cooper has called for all Confederate monuments to be removed from state property — and the issue remains in limbo.

 The Vance Monument honors Buncombe County native Zebulon Vance, who was the governor of North Carolina for most of the Civil War. Both monuments are situated along the old Dixie Highway — and the tribute to Lee was one of several erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1926.