Judge reverses earlier decision and allows removal of Confederate memorial at Arlington Cemetery

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday allowed the Arlington National Cemetery to remove a century-old Confederate memorial one day after blocking the removal over a report that gravesites were disturbed.

At a hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston said he issued the temporary injunction Monday after receiving an urgent phone call from the memorial's supporters saying that gravesites adjacent to the memorial were being desecrated as contractors began work to remove the memorial.

He said he toured the site before Tuesday's hearing and saw the site being treated respectfully.

“I saw no desecration of any graves,” Alston said. “The grass wasn't even disturbed.”

Alston issued an 18-page opinion Tuesday evening to lift the injunction. He said the allegations that the removal efforts amounted to grave desecration “were, at best, ill-informed and, at worst, inaccurate.”

Cemetery officials sought to have the injunction lifted quickly. They said they are required by law to complete the removal by the end of the year and that the contractors doing the work have only limited availability over the next week or so.

In a statement Tuesday evening, the cemetery said it “will resume the deliberate process of removing the Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery immediately. While the work is performed, surrounding graves, headstones and the landscape will be carefully protected.”

An independent commission recommended removal of the memorial last year in conjunction with a review of Army bases with Confederate names.

The statue, designed to represent the American South and unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot (9.8-meter) pedestal. The woman holds a laurel...