The removal of the windows, which will take a couple days, reflects a flurry of national debate over whether to take down monuments, statues or art that honor Confederates in both public and private spaces across the country. The issue gained prominence after a mass killing at a black church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, and then again last month after a deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville. Several dozen monuments have been either removed or a debate to remove them is on the table, in places from New Orleans and Baltimore to Helena, Mont., and Los Angeles.
Budde and Cathedral Dean Randy Hollerith said the governing board voted “overwhelmingly” Tuesday to remove the windows, but acknowledged there were opponents who felt the windows are part of the cathedral and U.S. history and could be contextualized rather than removed.
A call to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which raised money for the initial windows along with a private donor, was not immediately returned Wednesday.
On Wednesday as the scaffolding was put up, some visitors began gathering, including a few who seemed concerned by the idea that the windows were being taken out.
The windows are among some 200 in the soaring Gothic building, in addition to hundreds of other carvings and fabric and other kinds of art. They are located in a bay in the middle of the nave and each have four panels, one honoring the life of Jackson and the other of Lee.
They show the men at points in their academic, military and spiritual lives. Kevin Eckstrom, a cathedral spokesman, noted that they are praised in wording alongside the windows as pious Christians. “The problem is that they are shown as saints,” he said Wednesday.
The cathedral plans to keep the windows and find a way to display them in historical context, he said.
“People ask: ‘Are we whitewashing history and trying to forget reality?’ But the truth is that slavery is as old as the Bible. But we believe in a God that liberates slaves,” he said.