Throughout the South, local governments have taken to removing monuments despite state laws that put them at risk of heavy fines.
Robert Harris’ parents were sharecroppers who attended civil rights meetings and registered to vote. For that, their landlord plowed up their yard.
But the killing of George Floyd – and the national discussions of systemic racism that it sparked – “switched on a light bulb,” Harris said of Lowndes County, which is 72% black.“The thought has always been there,” he said. “The light just got brighter on it, so to speak.” In Tennessee, the General Assembly in 2013 passed the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, amending it in 2016 and 2018 — in the midst of Memphis’ fight to remove multiple Confederate statues in city parks — to make it even more difficult for local entities to take down monuments.
“I think in the end, most all of these will come down,” Strickland said of similar statues across the South. “It’s the right thing to do, and I think it’s inevitable.” “The UDC might have fundraised to design and purchase and then put in place the monuments, but it’s subsequent governments who continued to uphold and maintain them,” Green said. “While they look like a private organization, they’re going hand in hand with the emergence of a white supremacist racial government structure.”
Learotha Williams, a historian in Nashville and professor at Tennessee State University, has traveled the state studying historic markers. Monument erection slowed down after the 1920s, due in part to saturation, but rose again during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. “I discount anything when they say they want to put it in a museum or a cemetery,” he said. “I discount that. If you compromise and do that, they’re going to be coming at you later to move it from that spot.”
There have been no Black Lives Matter protests in Bolivar, no large public cries in recent years for the monument to come down. “I think at the end of the day, the people who know right and wrong are going to have to understand there are some things we’re just going to have to live with until God transitions us out of this world,” said Shaw, who in 2000 became the first Black lawmaker to represent his district since Reconstruction.
The county struggles to attract industry, Harris said, and has a small tax base that makes investments in economic development difficult. The commissioner accuses the legislature of “setting up winners and losers” that contribute to Lowndes County’s struggles. “There’s a lot of pressure right now on local communities,” said Levin, the Civil War historian. “If there are loopholes to be had, they’re going to find them if they want to remove their statues. That pressure and their intensity is going to determine how it evolves.”
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