Virginia’s governor announced Monday that his state chose to remove the Confederate statue of Robert E. Lee from the U.S. Capitol building, adding that the statue of Lee will be replaced by a statue of civil rights leader Barbara Jones. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, expressed his support for the removal of the Lee statue, writing on Twitter, “Last night, Virginia removed its statue of Robert E. Lee from the U.S. Capitol. This is an important step forward—it is past time we tell our story with images of perseverance, diversity, and inclusion.” Each state is permitted to have two statues in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection, but a Virginia state commission decided to replace the statue of Lee, which had been placed there in 1909 along with President George Washington’s statue. “The Confederacy is a symbol of Virginia’s racist and divisive history, and it is past time we tell …