Thousands petition to swap Confederate statue for Missy Elliott

Missy Elliott achieved success “without owning a slave”, says a petition for the star to replace a statue in Portsmouth, Virginia.

A PETITION to replace a Confederate monument in Virginia with a Missy Elliott statue has been signed by more than 20,000 people.

The campaign, started by Virginia resident Nathan Coflin, seeks to take down a monument of a Confederate soldier in the city of Portsmouth and replace it with one of the Work It rapper, who was born there.

“Missy is everything the Confederacy was not,” the petition, which seeks 25,000 signatures, reads.

“Who better to encapsulate the culture and spirit of the city enshrined in a new monument than Grammy Award winning rapper, dancer, and record producer Missy ‘Misdemeanor’ Elliott?”

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Mr Coflin’s petition describes the rapper as “a true native Portsmouth hero”.

“Hailing from humble beginnings as the only child of a power company dispatcher and a welder at Portsmouth’s lauded naval shipyard, she rose to become a platinum recording artist with over 30-million albums sold,” it reads.

“All this without even once owning a slave.”

The petition is the latest debate on whether to take down Confederate monuments in the US.

It started just a week after a woman died in Charlottesville, Virginia, as white supremacists descended on the city to protest around the statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee.

“Getting this statue put up will be a lot of work and you may ask yourself, is it worth it?,” the petition reads, alluding to the lyrics of Elliott’s 2002 hit, Work It.