Arlington’s congressman is feeling more confident about the passage of legislation to drop Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s name from the historic house at Arlington National Cemetery.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-8) told ARLnow that co-sponsors of his legislation to rename Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial as the “Arlington House National Historic Site” could rise from about 160 to 200 by the end of this congressional term. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has reintroduced companion legislation in the Senate.
While Beyer anticipates more supporters of the bill, he doesn’t expect it to pass in this Congress.
“I don’t think this speaker would ever let it go to the floor, but I very much expect it to pass in the first quarter of 2027 and I think we can get it in the Senate too, and I don’t expect that this is something that Donald Trump would automatically veto,” Beyer said in a recent interview.
Enslaved people had built the house between 1802 and 1818 for Martha Custis Washington’s grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, to become the nation’s first memorial to George Washington. Custis’ daughter, Mary Anna Custis, later married Robert E. Lee and inherited the home in 1857. The Lees fled the home during the Civil War, and the Union Army later seized the house as well as the grounds and started a military cemetery.
Arlington House had been designated as a memorial to Robert E. Lee in 1925, and Congress named it the Custis-Lee Mansion in 1955. It was renamed Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial in 1972.
“It was only renamed in the early 1950s the Lee-Custis Mansion,” Beyer said. “It was the Arlington House for many decades before that. So we’re just trying to restore where it was.”
At Arlington House, at least 100 enslaved people lived and worked for over 60 years. In recent years, a group of descendants who were among the enslaved and enslavers at Arlington House have petitioned for the site to be redesignated as Arlington House National Historic Site.
Stephen Hammond, who is among the descendants of enslaved people at Arlington House, told ARLnow the renaming is about recognizing the history of all people associated with the historic site, not just Robert E. Lee.
“As a result of descendants coming together back in 2021 and beginning to find our collective voice, which includes Lee family members, we wanted to make sure that people understood that this is a collective effort as we think about how we interpret a space like this,” Hammond said. “It’s not only about Lee, it’s about everybody else.”
Even without a name change, descendants have left their mark on the historic site. Arlington House underwent a significant renovation between 2018 and 2021 to restore the mansion’s 1860 appearance and the quarters of the enslaved people.
The site now provides a more thorough history of enslaved people and added artifacts from the families. On the walls of the mansion, NPS displays a signed agreement between the descendant families to collaborate on accurately telling the story of the historic site and the people who lived there.
Descendants are also collaborating on a quilt to display on the wall of the mansion.
