Charlotteseville covers Confederate statues with tarps

On Monday, the Charlottesville City Council voted to cover the city’s monuments to Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson with black fabric. It’s a symbolic gesture to indicate the citywide mourning of Heather Heyer, the activist who was killed at the Unite The Right rally led by neo-Nazis earlier this month. The city has become the center for discussions of racial inequality and white supremacy in this country in recent weeks, inspiring Baltimore, New Orleans, and god, even the University Of Texas to take down similar monuments.

CNN reports the plan was to place the tarps—or shrouds—over the statues by the end of the week; obtaining such large swaths of weather-proof fabric proved to be difficult. But they arrived early, and so the monuments to Lee and Jackson are no longer clearly visible, though passersby or out-of-towners are bound to ask what the cloaked things are in the middle of the park. Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe is unable to order the Lee and Jackson statues’ removal, but the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports he’ll “most likely” push for legislation to do so.