A Mississippi Confederate monument covered for 4 years is moved

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

Updated 12:20 AM EDT, September 18, 2024


GRENADA, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi town has taken down a Confederate monument that stood on the courthouse square since 1910 — a figure that was tightly wrapped in tarps the past four years, symbolizing the community’s enduring division over how to commemorate the past.

Grenada’s first Black mayor in two decades seems determined to follow through on the city’s plans to relocate the monument to other public land. A concrete slab has already been poured behind a fire station about 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) from the square. But a new fight might be developing. A Republican lawmaker from another part of Mississippi wrote to Grenada officials saying she believes the city is violating a state law that restricts the relocation of war memorials or monuments.

The Grenada City Council voted to move the monument in 2020, weeks after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. The vote seemed timely: Mississippi legislators had just retired the last state flag in the U.S. that prominently featured the Confederate battle emblem.

The tarps went up soon after the vote, shrouding the Confederate soldier and the pedestal he stood on. But even as people complained about the eyesore, the move was delayed by tight budgets, state bureaucracy or political foot-dragging. Explanations vary, depending on who’s asked.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/confederate-monument-mississippi-grenada-e7424281b3f9931d855d8d11347c1f42

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From the excepts -

A Republican lawmaker from another part of Mississippi wrote to Grenada officials saying she believes the city is violating a state law that restricts the relocation of war memorials or monuments.

To paraphrase Tm Walz as a response to that GOP loon - "Mind your damn business!"

[twodogsbarking]

1. They were the enemy. Don't they teach history in Mississississississipppppi?

Nope.

[Silent Type]

2. Growing up in the South makes me appreciative of these confederate monument removals. These things

weren't put there to commemorate the South (which would be plenty bad), they were put there to signify hatred and racial discrimination decades after the Civil War.

Heck, the largest CW monument wasn't finished until 1972 and was a joint project between the Klan and racist Georgia government officials.

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[Cirsium]

3. Commemorating the South

Where are the statues honoring George Thomas? Thomas was responsible for the first significant Union victory during the war at the Battle of Mill Spring in December 1861. He is nicknamed the “Rock of Chickamauga” for the heroic stand he led at the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. That desperate action probably saved the army.

At Battle of Stones River December 31, 1862-January 2, 1863 Thomas made a heroic stand to prevent the Union army from being routed and then directed a ferocious counter attack that gave the victory to the Union army. Thomas led the famous "impossible" uphill assault on Missionary Ridge during the battle of Chattanooga in November 1863 that ran the Confederates out of Tennessee.

Finally, Thomas totally destroyed Hood's army at Nashville that put an end to the Confederate threat in the western theater. Sherman marched to the sea, ignoring Hood's army and moving through Georgia relatively unopposed. That may have destroyed Confederate morale in the West, but it was Thomas who destroyed the Confederate army in the West.

When the war ended Thomas was put in charge of the military division overseeing Reconstruction in the areas covering Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. In that office he aggressively defended freed slaves and fought the Ku Klux Klan.

Thomas was from Virginia, but stayed loyal to his country, the United States, even though that caused him to be estranged from friends and family.

"Damn the torpedoes!" That quote is attributed to Rear Admiral David Glasgow Farragut during the Battle of Mobile Bay. Farragut is unquestionably the greatest naval hero in US history. He was a Virginian, and was approached by Confederate officials and asked to lead the Confederate navy. "I'll see you roast in hellfire first!" was his response. When they suggested he might no longer be welcome in Virginia with those sentiments, he agreed and headed North to serve his country with only the clothes on his back.

186,000 Black soldiers served in the Union Army. 29,000 served in the Navy. 68,000 were killed. There were Twenty-four African Americans who received the Congressional Medal of Honor. That honor is given to those who exhibited extraordinary bravery in battle. They faced much greater hardship and received much less attention than white soldiers did. Most of them were from the South. Are they not heroes?

If it were true that the statues are there to commemorate the South and its heroes - "our Southern heritage" - where are the statues honoring these men?

No, the monuments are about slavery, about the Ku Klux Klan and about white supremacy, not about "Southern heritage."

[Silent Type]

4. "Heritage of Hatred" is what I call it.