TERLINGUA, Texas (AP) – A statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee who removed the city of Dallas from a park and later sold it in an online auction is now on display at a west Texas golf resort.
The bronze sculpture, which was removed from Dallas Park in September 2017, is now located at Lajitas Golf Resort in Terlingua, Texas, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The 27,000-acre resort, privately owned by Dallas billionaire and pipeline mogul Kelcy Warren and managed by Scott Beasley, president of Dallas-based WSB Resorts and Clubs, received the statue as a donation in 2019.
The 1935 sculpture by Alexander Phimister Proctor was among several Lee memorials in the United States that were removed from the public eye in 2017 amid the aftermath of racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The artwork, showing Lee and another soldier on horseback, was on hold at Dallas’ Hensley Field, the former Naval Air Station, until it was sold in 2019. Holmes Firm PC made according to documents from. the top bid for the sculpture of the Dallas City Council.
Terlingua, which is located in Brewster County near Big Bend National Park and the Rio Grande, has fewer than 100 residents and no records of black residents, according to recent census data. Blacks make up just 1.7% of Brewster County’s population, according to census data.
Beasley told the Chronicle that the statue is only there to “preserve a fabulous work of art”.
“I would say that of the over 60,000 guests we host each year, we have had a negative comment or two,” he said.
But Black Lives Matter Houston activist Brandon Mack said he has problems with supporters of Lee arguing the statue is just “an appreciation for art,” and wonders if the same defense is made for other offensive symbols from the world would be used throughout history, or whether that is reserved for iconography exclusively glorifying oppression of blacks.
“We don’t glorify the swastika; we have no monuments (of) Adolf Hitler, ”he said.
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