Baltimore: ALL Confederate Statues Have Now Been Removed

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I imagine a Bin Laden statue would naturally attract vandalism...

I'm sure BLM would be happy to remove Lee's statue free of charge...

But if caught the perpetrators could be changed with trespassing and destruction of private property.

I plan on setting up an OBL statue that is holding a confederate flag and wearing an maga hat.

I think the goal is to waste time bickering over who will pay for it while going out of their way to ensure any volunteers are treated as criminals. Oh well, if you're going to get convicted of a crime, it might as well be for removing rubbish from public spaces.

I'm pretty sure BLM would demolish and pulverise Lee's statue into dust and donate it to the "Sons of Delaware" as fertiliser

Basically, when they pretend like cost is an issue they're lying.

A Confederate monument recently vandalized with red paint and the word "racists" has been removed from a Southern California cemetery.

The Orange County Cemetery District, which operates the cemetery, said the monument had become "an unsightly public nuisance" after the vandalism, and the district wanted to remove it quickly.

A crane was used to remove the monument Thursday.

The district said it began to look into records to prove who owned the burial plots where the monument stood and verify that it was approved by the board, The Orange County Register reported Friday.

Cemetery District General Manager Tim Deutsch said last month that the district had contacted the Orange County chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to discuss altering the monument but had stopped hearing from the group after several attempts. The district's board then ordered the monument's removal.

Robert Williams, who leads the Orange County chapter and statewide division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, told the newspaper that the chapter has a different perspective of the dispute.

"Nobody put it there in the middle of the night - there was a huge public ceremony," said Williams.

Deutsch said it's costing the district an estimated $15,000 to remove and store the granite pillar, and Williams' group would have to reimburse the district to place it back.

The California Sons Of Confederate Veterans responded on Facebook after seeing the removal, writing "Santa Ana spits on its own History."

The monument had honored some of Orange County's founding fathers who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Atlanta will soon add some lessons about the South’s racist history on markers placed next to four historic monuments amid the ongoing national debate over Confederate statues.

The first of the panels could be installed as early as Friday, officials said.

In Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, the 1911 Peace Monument commemorating post-Civil War reconciliation will get context noting that its inscription promotes a narrative centered on white veterans, while ignoring African Americans.

This monument should no longer stand as a memorial to white brotherhood; rather, it should be seen as an artifact representing a shared history in which millions of Americans were denied civil and human rights,” it states.

Georgia law bars the removal of such monuments. Other states with laws protecting Confederate monuments include Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

The project puts the city ahead of other communities grappling with what to do about their monuments, Atlanta History Center President and CEO Sheffield Hale says.

“It’s telling the truth, and it’s also giving people an opportunity to have a discussion around facts,” Hale said. “The goal is to start a community discussion.”

A few days after the Charlottesville rally, protesters sprayed red paint on Atlanta’s Peace Monument. Statues in other cities have also been vandalized in recent years.

One hope in Atlanta is that adding context in the form of the markers “will take some of the oxygen — the accelerant — out of the room” and make it less likely that statues will be vandalized, Hale said.

Another of the new Atlanta markers will be placed near a monument erected in 1935 to commemorate the Battle of Peachtree Creek. It notes that the statue’s inscription describes the U.S. after the Civil War as “a perfected nation.”

“This ignores the segregation and disenfranchisement of African Americans and others that still existed in 1935,” the marker states.

Other Atlanta markers will be placed near two monuments in the city’s historic Oakland Cemetery: The “Lion of Atlanta” monument and the Confederate Obelisk.

The Atlanta History Center has developed a Confederate Monument Interpretation Guide to add historical perspective to such statues, Hale said. He’s hoping Atlanta’s efforts to add context can be used to guide other communities as they decide whether what to do with their own monuments.

“I think in a lot of cases once people see the power of contextualization, some people might decide they’d like to keep them there as a way to show how far we’ve come, or the journey that we’ve had, and explain what was going on at the time they were erected,” Hale said.

The Fort Monroe Authority on Friday removed the letters that spelled "Jefferson Davis Memorial Park" from an iron archway that honored the one-time Confederate president imprisoned at the former Army post.

The removal came after a lengthy review process to determine the arch's place at Fort Monroe following Gov. Ralph Northam's call in April to have the entire 50-foot structure dismantled.

Fort Monroe's preservation officer David Stroud began reviewing that feasibility with the Department of Historic Resources to determine if it would adversely effect the property's historic status, and ultimately came up with this alternative.

On Thursday, FMA Executive Director Glenn Oder, DHR and the governor signed an agreement recommending to keep up the arch, remove the letters and add interpretive signage near the arch's base at the Bernard and Ruckman Road intersection.

"The state preservation officer and the governor agreed to a 'mitigation plan, which is essentially a compromise,' " Oder said.

Standing on ladders, crews on an overcast morning cut the tack welding that kept the letters adhered to the arch.

They will be stored in the Casemate Museum and curated as a part of the interpretation of the Jefferson Davis story, Oder said. Davis, a former U.S. Senator and Secretary of War, was imprisoned for treason at the fort following the Civil War.

At the end of August, Fort Monroe will host commemoration events to mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to English North America.

Christine Gergely, a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which paid the U.S. Army $10,000 to build the arch in 1956, looked on Friday as crews worked.

Gergely said the arch, built on the south bastion, was meant to commemorate the 1961 centennial of the Civil War.

She said the UDC has worked with other historic groups to help preserve their heritage and felt her group deserved the same treatment.

"We should have been formally informed," Gergely said. "I think this is very unfair that we weren't told this was happening today."

Bill Wiggins, a member of the Contraband Historical Society, who felt the arch was offensive, also came to witness the action. Wiggins said regardless of if the letters are gone, it still preserves history and can lead to a greater dialogue.

Critics have questioned the presence of the arch and its message, given the fort's nickname "Freedom's Fortress" and its position hosting the 400th anniversary events.

The arch and accompanying memorial park are listed as contributing landscapes in the original governing documents, crafted after the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) decision.

The governing documents list several guidelines for the future stewardship of the 565-acre fortress property, which was designated a national historic landmark.

But the arch and memorial park do not fall within the original period of significance — from 1819 to 1946. Other documents, such as the fort's listing on the national registry of historic places, have different criteria and extend the period of significance to 1960.

During the review process, the Fort Monroe Authority shared its research on the arch and sought input from stakeholders, including the National Park Service and other interested nonprofit groups.

The public also was given an opportunity for about a month to submit comments online, which captured more than 1,000 responses.

The authority also hosted a public comment meeting Monday, even as officials announced they would be taking the letters off the arch.

Friday's activity drew a few spectators who calmly looked on and discussed the issue.

Bob Shirley, a Virginia Beach resident and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said the action is Northam's attempt at saving face since February, when a blackface photo was found on his page in his medical school yearbook.

Others in favor of the arch staying in tact said the Fort Monroe Authority was misleading Monday. Officials presented that the letters would be removed, but did not say when it would happen.

A judge dismissed charges Friday against two N.C. State University students who put white hoods on a Confederate statue in April.

Enzo Niebuhr and Jody Anderson were charged with disorderly conduct by abusive language and defacing a public building or statue, warrants show. The dismissal of their charges was first reported by WRAL.

Warrants show Niebuhr and Anderson climbed on the North Carolina Women of the Confederacy statue and placed “white KKK style hoods” on the monument’s figures of a woman and a young boy.

Capitol police asked them to get down, and they complied.

As they were handcuffed and taken to a police car, the warrants said, they chanted “(Expletive) these racist statues! (Expletive) the confederacy! Racist statues have to go!”

The 7-foot tall bronze statue was installed in 1914 on the south side of Capitol Square, according to the American Legion.

“Activists allegedly climbed the monument and placed Klan hoods over its two heads to properly contextualize the statue’s role in perpetuating white supremacy and reinforcing both Jim Crow era and modern racist violence and oppression,” Smash Racism Raleigh said in a statement.

Climbing the monuments around the Capitol is not a crime, nor are there any signs that prohibit people from climbing on them, according to court testimony Friday.

The trial turned into a First Amendment debate as the two sides argued over whether the students’ chants qualified as “disorderly conduct.”

Capitol police officer Dustin Dobson said he believed that loudly yelling the “F word” on the Capitol grounds, especially as nearby churchgoers attended Easter services, was offensive.

“The nature of what they were protesting could have offended anybody,” he testified. “You don’t know what those churchgoers had in their family line. They could have had Confederate soldiers. Could’ve offended them. They could have lost somebody in the confederate war.”

“It was based on the totality of circumstances. Church, family, little children being around,” he said about the charges.

Dobson was also upset about the white masks on the monument.

“To me, it’s a hate crime,” he said.

The students’ defense attorney, Scott Holmes, argued that the charges of disorderly conduct by abusive language would require “a clear and present danger of violence.”

“The F-word in the court is even more protected in a park than it is in the courthouse,” he said.

Holmes also argued that if putting a medal, ribbon or wreath on the metal figures would not qualify as defacing a public statue, then neither should putting KKK hoods on them.

District Judge William Lawton dismissed the charges against Niebuhr and Anderson.

Holmes said in a statement to The News & Observer after the trial, “In their protest, my clients damaged no property and threatened no violence, so it is disturbing that the Capitol police and Wake County DA’s office would seek to violate their First Amendment rights in order to defend the symbols of white supremacy.”

The Confederate monument in Centennial Park will remain in its place, but new text will be displayed with historical context as to why it's there.

The monument was vandalized with red paint earlier this summer. The words “They Were Racists” were painted on a plaque featuring the names of 540 members of the Frank Cheatham Bivouac.

During a Metro Board of Parks and Recreation meeting, the Public Art Committee discussed the petition for removal or relocation of the monument.

Funding to add text to the monument will be provided by the parks commission, however the exact text or when it will be added has not been decided on.

The University of Mississippi said Wednesday that it's moving ahead with plans to transfer a Confederate soldier monument from its central location on campus to a spot near a secluded Confederate cemetery.

In an email sent to students, faculty and staff, interim Chancellor Larry Sparks wrote that the university submitted plans Tuesday to take down, move and reassemble the monument.

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History must review and approve the university's plans . College Board trustees, who govern Mississippi's eight public universities, must also approve the move.

Sparks agreed in March to calls from faculty, students and staff to move the marble soldier and base from near the school's historic heart. The monument has stood sentry there since 1906, when the United Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned it.

The monument is 29 feet (8.8 meters) tall and weighs 40,000 pounds (18,000 kilograms). Plans call for moving it outside a cemetery in a less prominent area of the Oxford campus that holds graves of Confederate soldiers killed at the battle of Shiloh. A new concrete walkway would be built leading to the cemetery, with the monument installed along it.

Founded in 1848, the university has worked in fits and starts the past two decades to distance itself from Confederate imagery. Since 2016, Ole Miss has installed plaques to provide historical context about the monument and about slaves who built some pre-Civil War campus buildings

Pro-Confederate groups from outside the university rallied at the statue Feb. 23, calling in part for its preservation, and Ole Miss men's basketball players knelt during the national anthem at a game that day to protest those activities. Some conservative political groups in Mississippi are pushing for Ole Miss to stop making changes to Confederate symbols.

A 2004 Mississippi law says war monuments, including those commemorating the Confederacy, can't be altered. But they can be moved to a "more suitable location." Sparks echoed that language in his email.

Plans released Wednesday call for placing a 10-foot-high (3-meter-high) screened fence around the current monument while it is disassembled, with university police officers providing security. Plans propose taking the monument down and moving it on a single truck in one day, and then reassembling it in two more days.

The plaque discussing the monument's historical context is supposed to travel with it. The plans call for 90 days to complete the whole project, including building the new walkway, with proposals from contractors to be received by Oct. 30. It's unclear if the university will have approval to start by then.

SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — The United Daughters of the Confederacy’s Shreveport chapter has been given formal notice that they have 90 days to remove their monument from outside the Caddo Parish Courthouse.

n a certified letter dated August 28, Parish Attorney Donna Frazier advises the group that the letter “serves as the demand under Art. 493 of the Civil Code for Shreveport Chapter #237 of the Daughters of the Confederacy to remove its property which is the Confederate Monument located at Courthouse Square” on Texas Street in downtown Shreveport.

As you are aware, Caddo Parish has been in litigation with the Daughters concerning removal of the monument since October 2017, when the Parish passed Resolution 69 of 2017 authorizing the monument’s removal. The Federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal has ruled that the Parish owns the ground beneath the monument and has the right to request its removal.

“By virtue of Resolution 69, the Parish has withdrawn consent for the Confederate Monument, as your organization’s property, to remain on the Courthouse Square which is the Parish’s property.”

The letter advises that “the Parish is willing to grant the Daughters reasonable access to Courthouse Square to remove the monument and return the space it occupies to a reasonable condition.”

The demand to remove the monument comes nearly two years after the Caddo Parish Commission voted to remove the monument. The Shreveport chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy immediately filed suit to block the removal on the grounds that it has a “private property interest” in the land where the statue stands in front of the Caddo Parish Courthouse. It also claims parish officials violated its rights to free speech and equal protection.

A federal judge in Monroe threw out the suit last year, a decision that has since been upheld by a federal appeals court.

The deadline for removal of the monument is Tuesday, November 26, 2019.

Knox County Commissioners President Kellie Streeter says the commissioners “weren’t fully aware” that the flag near the monument outside the county courthouse in Vincennes represented the Confederacy.

It was replaced with an Indiana state flag this week.

She says “misunderstandings” about its origins kept it flying among seven different flags the Marine Corps League owns and maintains near the war monument.

The replica resembles the Confederacy’s first official flag, which flew for one year starting in early 1861.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WCAV) — The two Confederate statues located in downtown Charlottesville have been vandalized for the second time in a week. This time, someone broke off parts of the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee monuments.

The Stonewall Jackson statue appears to have been hardest hit.

The noses on the two angelic icons on the base of the statue appear to have been knocked off.

Some of the toes on the female symbol have also been chipped off, while the sword in the hand of the male angel symbol appears to have been broken.

The Robert E. Lee statue has an eagle symbol at the base, and its beak beak is no longer there.

Legal analyst Scott Goodman says this is a very serious offense.

"It does carry a penalty of either up to one year in jail or up to five years in prison depending on the value of the damage," he said. "If it's less than a thousand dollars, it's a misdemeanor for a maximum 12 months in jail. If the damage is more than a thousand dollars, then it is a felony that carries a sentence of five years in prison."

Goodman also says the property is under state code, and as a war memorial (which the recent lawsuit over the monuments concluded), they are protected under the statute against damaging such pieces of property.

Over the weekend, "1619" was spray painted on the statues, referencing the year the first slaves came to Virginia. That was quickly scrubbed off in the day afterward. Restoring broken pieces is significantly more difficult.

A small group has been gathering for almost four years — 203 consecutive Sundays, to be precise — at the front gates of the University of Southern Mississippi where three flags fly high.

The group has no problem with the Stars and Stripes, which sits atop all three flagpoles, but the protesters say one flag should have a different pattern.

“History is history,” said Joe Barnes, 67, one of the group’s stalwarts. “When I’m at home, I fly my Confederate flag, my Mississippi state flag and my U.S. flag.”

The Mississippi state flag flies neither at the University of Southern Mississippi nor since November 2016 at any of the Magnolia State’s other eight public institutions of higher learning.

After a racist gunman killed nine black worshippers at a South Carolina church in 2015, flags with an “X” pattern of stars that once marked the Confederate army’s fight for a slavery society were taken down.

Mississippi is the last holdout. Voters thought they had laid the issue to rest with a 2001 referendum, but calls to change the state flag came roaring back after the Charleston killings.

One by one, university presidents started rolling up the controversial banners. They said the Mississippi flag was incompatible with the diverse, inclusive community they hoped to establish on campus.

The state flag flies over the capital in Jackson and state government buildings, but at least 30 cities and counties have joined the universities in furling the flag, said Lea Campbell, founder and president of the Mississippi Rising Coalition, a social justice group with headquarters in Ocean Springs.

Voters will have another chance to speak on the issue, albeit obliquely, in November when they choose a new governor. Outgoing Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, has said any change to the flag should be put to a statewide vote and not be made by a coalition of officials in Jackson.

Tate Reeves, the lieutenant governor who will represent the Republican Party in the election, has the same view.

His Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jim Hood, did not respond to multiple attempts for comment but released a statement in April saying he supported changing the flag.

Such unwillingness to engage in debate on the topic is typical in state politics, The Clarion-Ledger reported that month when it took an impromptu survey of various candidates.

The protesters at the University of Southern Mississippi say politicians are dodging the issue. The No State Flag/No State Funds group noted that 65% of voters supported keeping the current flag in 2001.

They tried to weave the flag into the state Constitution with Initiative 62 starting in 2017, but they were never able to amass enough signatures.

The Legislature has floated various bills that would change the flag, although none has ever reached the governor’s desk. A measure to fine universities that refuse to fly the flag failed in 2017.

For many weeks after beginning their protests, No State Flag/No State Funds attracted large and largely hostile crowds that pitted some faculty members, students and out-of-state activists against the pro-flag group.

The university has erected wooden barriers separating the sides, and an ongoing court case involves an anti-flag protester who sprayed pepper spray into the eyes of pro-flag demonstrator David Flynt.

Protesters insist they are far from the caricature of Klansmen in which they are often depicted.

Still, they make their allegiances clear. Mr. Barnes sports a “Make Dixie Great Again” red cap, and several of the protesters wear shirts emblazoned with some form of the Confederate symbol.

The group plants state flags of various sizes along the curb in front of them, and passing motorists sometimes honk or, as Robert Ulmer noted, present the group “with a thumbs-up or a middle finger. About 50/50.”

A group is calling itself Lynching Memorialization in Lafayette County said the board of supervisors has given the go-ahead for a memorial on the square, but the board did not approve the language.

Alonzo Hilliard with the Lynching Memorial board said the board of supervisors approved the memorial to go on the east side of the square, near the confederate soldier monument - but did not approve of the language.

It said at least one of the lynchings was because a black man had an affair with a white woman. According to the board of supervisors, that specific wording has nothing to do with it.

Instead, the board said the entire wording has to be approved by the State Department of Archives and History.

Dallas' Robert E. Lee statue that sold for $1.4 million in June will have a new private audience — golfers at Black Jack's Crossing along the Texas-Mexico border.

The Lajitas golf course owned by Dallas billionaire and pipeline mogul Kelcy Warren saw the Confederate general arrive Monday afternoon, confirmed Scott Beasley, president of Dallas-based WSB Resorts and Clubs. D Magazine first reported the news Friday morning.

"It was donated to the resort, and we could not be a more proud recipient," Beasley said over email Friday.

Addison-based attorney Ronald Holmes bought the monument in June for $1.4 million after the Dallas City Council approved to put the controversial monument up for sale in an auction. Holmes didn't respond to requests for comment Friday.

Alexander Phimister Proctor's 1935 sculpture, which features Lee with a young soldier on horseback, was removed from its longtime location at an Oak Lawn park in 2017. A deadly protest over the removal of a Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va., prompted council members to transfer the statue out of public view and into a secure storage area at Hensley Field.

The Confederate War Memorial next to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center was also vandalized earlier this year shortly after the council's vote to remove the statue of Lee.

Council member Tennell Atkins said Friday the monument would have "torn the whole city apart" and was done discussing it.

"I buried that issue a long time ago," Atkins said Friday.

...I wonder what the ethnic demographic of the membership of that (private) golf course is!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Not the caddies or the bar staff, mind .

I don't.