I hate to destroy these statues, but I say put them in the racist museum: The USA Rogue's Gallery, like Madam Tussaud's but just US.
Put it right in DC & charge a token fee to see our ancient racist history, just like the today's Romans go to see the statues of villains like Nero and warmongers like Caesar.
Send the profits to a school for orphaned black kids. People would go. Capitalism would work like a clock to provide $.
Look, my Irish ancestors suffered huge bigotry in the US, but the ones who came at the previous famine during the slave era were turned to crime, because the only jobs they could often get were things slaves were not risked on.
The US Irish slowly gained acceptance, but the lingering prejudice was long there.
BTW, the other half of the family was German, who came here between the Kaiser and Hitler. I'm lucky they weren't rounded up and detained, but by 1930's they were respectable folks. Plus they lived at Germantown, which is the market area of Cincinnati Ohio. Huge German population there.
But there was prejudice galore. My family never spoke of it, but I've read the old news reports of the trouble at our entry into WW2.
My great-grandpa Joe drove a truck in the US Army, because they weren't running from the army. They escaped Nazi warhawk insanity.
I don't want to erase any of that. I want it to be known and known to be true. The good and the bad.
We don't have to revere Lee (one of Americas best generals ever) for being a slaver, but we must remember him as a human.
He was wrong, but he was still formational in our history.
If we erase that, what fiction will fill the hole?