Fighting the 'Lost Cause': Whose Heritage? report
documents progress in battle to remove Confederate iconography
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Dwayne Fatherree, SPLC Investigative Reporter | Read the full piece
here
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Friend,
In Mayor Steven Reed's vision for Montgomery, Alabama, the city
will be seen as a progressive, welcoming community. That's why
he established a committee last year to assess the numerous monuments,
memorials and other reminders of its place as the first capital of the
Confederacy in 1861.
"I want to make sure that the city of Montgomery is one that is
forward-thinking and is broad and inclusive of everyone," said
Reed, the first Black mayor of the city that was incorporated in 1819.
"I think when I initiated that survey, along with others that
are in play, it was with that in mind. We want to make sure people
think of this city as an active community that they would like to
work, live and play in - not a hostile community that is holding
on to myths and stories that were grounded in one of the worst
chapters of our nation's history."
One of Reed's first steps toward that vision was to rename
Jefferson Davis Avenue for civil rights attorney Fred D. Gray
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, who in the 1950s defended Rosa Parks and was called the "chief
counsel for the protest movement" by Martin Luther King Jr. The
move last year drew accolades from many as a change long overdue.
But renaming the street that honored the first president of the
Confederacy came with a cost: It brought a $25,000 fine
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from the state of Alabama. And, if the state's legislature has
its way, that amount could rise dramatically for other municipalities
in the future.
The state is one of six across the South that have enacted laws to
protect memorials to those who fought for the "Lost Cause"
from being removed, renamed or destroyed. The 2017 Alabama law applies
not only to statues and buildings but also street names.
Despite the backlash from legislatures in those states, the movement
to remove Confederate memorials continues to progress.
In the third edition of its Whose Heritage? report, released this
week, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified 377 Confederate
memorials that have been removed since 2015, when a white supremacist
murdered nine Black people at the historic "Mother
Emanuel" AME church
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in Charleston, South Carolina.
A flurry of removals, including the Confederate Soldier and Sailors
Monument
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in Birmingham's Linn Park, occurred after the deadly 2017
"Unite the Right"
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rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
And more than half of the 377 have come down in the wake of the murder
of George Floyd
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at the hands of police in 2020.
But - as in Montgomery and in Madison County, Alabama, where a
memorial to an unknown Confederate soldier was removed last year
- the city of Birmingham was fined for its removal of the Linn
Park obelisk.
READ MORE
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