A Mississippi Confederate monument covered for 4 years is moved
GRENADA, Madam — A Mississippi city has removed a Confederate monument that stood on the courthouse square since 1910. The statue had been tightly wrapped in tarps for the past four years and symbolized the community’s continuing divisions over how to commemorate its past.
Grenada’s first black mayor in two decades appears determined to push through the city’s plans to move 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 plaza.
But a new fight could be brewing. 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.
Grenada’s city council voted in 2020 to move the monument, weeks after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. The vote seemed timely: Mississippi lawmakers had just the last state flag has been retired in the United States, which prominently featured the Confederate emblem.
The tarps were put up shortly after the vote, covering the Confederate soldier and the pedestal on which he stood. But even as people complained about the unsightly site, the move was delayed by tight budgets, state bureaucracy or political wrangling. The explanations vary depending on who is asked.
In May, a new mayor and city council took office, ready to take action. On September 11, with little notice, police blocked traffic while a work crew dismantled and removed the 20-foot (6.1-meter) high stone structure.
“I’m glad it’s moved to another location,” said Robin Whitfield, an artist with a studio near Grenada’s historic plaza. “It shows that something has changed.”
Still, Whitfield, who is white, said she wishes Grenada’s leaders had invited the community to engage in dialogue about the symbol, to bridge the gap between those who believe moving it erases history and those who see it as a daily reminder of white supremacy. She was one of the few people who watched as a crane lifted parts of the monument onto a tractor-trailer.
“Nobody ever talked about it except screaming on Facebook,” Whitfield said.
Mayor Charles Latham said the monument is “quite a divisive figure” in the city of 12,300, where about 57% of residents are black and 40% white.
“I understand that people had family and stuff to fight and die in that war, and they should be proud of their family,” Latham said. “But you have to understand that there were people who were oppressed by this, by the Confederate flag that was on it. There was a lot of hate and violence against people of color, under the color of that flag.”
The city got permission from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to move the Confederate monument, as required. But Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes of Picayune said the location of the fire station is inappropriate.
“We are prepared to pursue such avenues as may be necessary to ensure that the statue is moved to a more suitable and appropriate location,” she wrote, suggesting a Confederate cemetery closer to the courthouse square as an alternative. She said the Ladies Cemetery Association is prepared to donate a parcel of land to the city to make this happen.
The Confederate Monument in Grenada is one of hundreds of monuments in the South. Most were unveiled in the early 20th century, when groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to shape the historical narrative by emphasizing the Lost Cause mythology of the Civil War.
The monuments, many of which are located outside courthouses, were re-examined after a openly white supremacist who posed with Confederate flags in photos posted online were killed nine black people at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Grenada’s monument features Confederate President Jefferson Davis and a Confederate flag. It was inscribed with praise for “the noble men who marched under the banner of the Stars and Bars” and “the noble women of the South” who “gave their loved ones to our country to conquer or die for truth and right.”
Half a century after it was dedicated, the monument’s symbolism played a role in a march for voting rights when Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders a mass meeting in downtown Grenada in June 1966Robert Green of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference climbed onto the pedestal and planted an American flag above Davis’s image.
Latham himself had previously suggested the cemetery as a new location for the memorial, but he said it was too late to change that now, as the city had already budgeted $60,000 for the relocation.
“So who’s going to reimburse the city for the $30,000 we’ve already spent to move this?” he said. “You should have shown up a year and a half ago, two years ago, before the city got to this point.”
A few other Confederate monuments in Mississippi have been relocated. In July 2020, a statue of a Confederate soldier was moved from a prominent spot on the University of Mississippi to a Civil War cemetery in a remote part of Oxford’s campus. In May 2021, a Confederate monument featuring three non-Confederate soldiers was Lowndes County Courthouse in Columbus to another cemetery with Confederate soldiers.
Lori Chavis, a Grenada city councilwoman, said covering the monument with tarps “has done nothing but create more division in our city.”
She said she supports moving the monument but worries about a lawsuit, acknowledging that people likely didn’t know exactly where the monument would go until recently.
“It’s tucked away in the woods and you can’t even see it when you drive behind the fire station,” Chavis said. “And I think that’s what made some of the citizens angry.”