Leaders of a New York Episcopal diocese say they’ll remove two plaques honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a church property in Brooklyn.
Bishop Lawrence Provenzano, leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, told Newsday the two plaques outside St. John’s Episcopal Church are being removed Wednesday.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy markers commemorate the spot where Lee is said to have planted a tree while serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Hamilton in New York in the 1840s. Two decades later, he became commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
The removal comes in the wake of last weekend’s deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists protested plans to remove a Lee statue from a public park.
