# Albert Pike Statue A bronze statue of Albert Pike — Confederate brigadier general, journalist, and the long-serving Sovereign Grand Commander of Scottish Rite Freemasonry — that stands in Judiciary Square in Washington, D.C. Authorized by Congress in 1898 and dedicated in 1901, it was for over a century **the only outdoor statue of a Confederate general in the nation's capital**. The Freemasons who lobbied for it secured a careful framing: the plinth honors Pike as "author, poet, scholar, soldier, jurist, orator, philanthropist and philosopher," with his Confederate service folded discreetly into "soldier." ## Toppling (Juneteenth 2020) During the George Floyd protests, demonstrators pulled the statue from its pedestal and set it ablaze on the night of June 19–20, 2020 — Juneteenth. It was the most prominent Confederate symbol toppled in Washington itself. The bronze was recovered and held in storage for five years while the empty plinth stood as a marker of the removal wave. ## Reinstallation (2025) In **August 2025** the National Park Service announced it would restore and reinstall the statue, citing obligations under historic-preservation law and the executive orders driving the federal restoration wave — the same policy current as [[Executive Order 14253]]. By **late October 2025** the refurbished statue was back on its pedestal in Judiciary Square. The move drew immediate opposition: D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton reintroduced legislation to remove the statue permanently, arguing that a city with no congressional vote should not be made to host a rehabilitated Confederate monument by federal fiat. ## Why It Matters Here The Pike statue is the cleanest single emblem of the 2025– restoration wave: a Confederate monument physically destroyed at the high-water mark of the 2020 removals, then deliberately rebuilt and re-erected by the federal government five years later. It is the first major Confederate statue to complete the full removal-to-restoration round trip, which is why it functions as the bellwether case in this folder. ## See Also - [[Contested Symbols Hub]] — the category map - [[Confederate Monuments]] — the phenomenon-level catalog - [[Executive Order 14253]] — the policy engine of the reinstallation - [[Arlington Confederate Memorial]] — the parallel DoD-jurisdiction restoration - [[Confederate-Named Military Bases]] — the named-places parallel