A year has "absolutely not" healed the wounds inflicted in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the deadly protest that has stoked "deep-seated racism," according to Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker on Sunday.
"A year isn't long enough," Walker told CBS's "Face the Nation." "We're talking about issues that have been going on here for centuries."
Less than five months after last August's rally turned violent and deadly, Walker was elected as the city's first African-American female mayor, running on the campaign of "unmask the illusion" of Charlottesville.
"While it is Thomas Jefferson's hometown, you're talking about a president who enslaved people and built his empire off the backs of black people," she told CBS host Margaret Brennan. "So, that's the truth that we don't want to tell, right?
"You're talking about a world-class university, but who is in that university? Who's able to walk those grounds versus who built the university? That university was built off of enslaved laborers."
Walker called for the removal of the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee statue for the "hate that it caused, the hate that it drew here," because it is "definitely" a symbol of white supremacy and not a war memorial, which leaves it protected from removal under local law.
"People were able to mobilize behind a decision that the previous council had made about removing those statues and get that many people into this area to make sure that we understood that they were going to do everything within their power not to let that happen, that means that absolutely it must come down," she told Brennan.
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