The fight over a Confederate statue in Arlington National Cemetery

A Confederate memorial in America's most honoured cemetery is coming down. But what should be done with it?

When Judith Ezekiel was five years old, her grandfather drove her and her two brothers to Arlington National Cemetery, to see a statue made by their relative.

Moses Jacob Ezekiel, Judith's cousin four times removed, was a renowned Jewish sculptor in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. His most famous work, what he called the "crowning achievement" of his career, has stood inside Arlington since 1914: the Confederate Memorial.

"My grandfather was quite proud of his artistic prowess," Dr Ezekiel says. At some point in their childhoods, Judith says, he took all 15 of his grandchildren to see Ezekiel's work.

The monument, a bronze statue and plinth on top of a granite base, commemorates the men who fought and died for the slave-holding southern states in the US Civil War.

For more than a century, this statue commemorating the Confederacy has stood inside Arlington - known as America's most sacred shrine. Overlooking Washington DC across the Potomac river, it hosts some 400,000 graves: US soldiers, sailors, astronauts, actors, and even two presidents.

But by next year, by order of the US government, the monument must be removed. The decision is part of an ongoing movement to rethink how the US re the Confederacy.

Some 377 memorials have been renamed or removed since 2015. But as of 2022, some 723 remain, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hundreds more roads, schools and parks named after Confederate leaders also remain.

Dr Ezekiel, a historian and professor emerita of women's and African American studies, thought little more of the statue until decades after her visit, in 2017.

That August, white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest the proposed removal of another statue, of Confederate General Robert E Lee.

Men marched through the streets chanting "Jews will not replace us" and "white lives matter". An avowed neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd, killing one person and injuring dozens more.

Watching the horror unfold on the news, Judith saw the far right demonstrators near a statue of Thomas Jefferson in the city. "The irony is that it was sculpted by a Jew - it was also sculpted by Moses Ezekiel," she says.

As the violence unfolded in Charlottesville, Dr Ezekiel called her relatives. "What can we do about Moses Ezekiel's monument in Arlington":[]}