Direct descendants of Robert E. Lee denounce white nationalists

Direct descendants of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee are denouncing the white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups that stoked violence in Charlottesville, Va., during protests opposing the removal of a statue of Lee. 

“There’s no place for that hate,” Robert E. Lee V, the general’s great-great-grandson, told Newsweek in an interview. 

In an earlier written statement on Tuesday, Lee and his sister, Tracy Lee Crittenberger, condemned the white nationalist groups and said their Confederate ancestor would not have tolerated such behavior.

“At the end of the Civil War, he implored the nation to come together to heal our wounds and to move forward to become a more unified nation,” the statement reads. “He never would have tolerated the hateful words and violent actions of white supremacists, the KKK, or Neo Nazis.”

{mosads}Lee told Newsweek that it would make “good sense” to move Confederate statues and monuments like the one in Charlottesville to museums, which would allow them to be put in historical context.

“I think that is absolutely an option, to move it to a museum and put it in the proper historical context,” Lee said. “Times were very different then. We look at the institution of slavery, and it’s absolutely horrendous. Back then, times were just extremely different.

“We understand that it’s complicated in 2017, when you look back at that period of time. … If you want to put statues of General Lee or other Confederate people in museums, that makes good sense.”

White nationalists had initially planned to gather in Charlottesville to protest the city’s February decision to remove the Lee statue from a public park. But the demonstrations quickly turned violent, resulting in the death of one woman, who was struck by a car allegedly driven by an Ohio man with ties to neo-Nazi groups.