Mississippi mayor says a Confederate monument is staying in storage during a lawsuit
JACKSON, Madam. — A Confederate Monument removed from a Mississippi courthouse will remain in storage rather than being relocated to a new location while a lawsuit over its future is considered, a city official said Friday.
“It is stored in a secure location,” Grenada Mayor Charles Latham told The Associated Press, without disclosing the location.
James L. Jones, a chaplain for a chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and Susan M. Kirk, a longtime Grenada resident, sued the city on Wednesday — a week after a work crew dismantled the stone monument, loaded it onto a tractor-trailer and drove it from the site where it had stood since 1910.
Grenada’s city council voted in 2020 to move the monument, weeks after police George Floyd in Minneapolis and after Mississippi legislators the last state flag has been retired in the United States, which prominently featured the Confederate emblem.
The monument has been covered with tarps for the past four years as officials sought necessary state permission for the move and debated how to finance the change.
The city’s proposed new location, announced days before the monument’s dismantling, is behind a fire station about 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) from the square.
The lawsuit states that the monument belongs on Grenada’s courthouse square, which “has significant historical and cultural value.”
The 20-foot (6.1-meter) tall monument depicts a Confederate soldier. The base is engraved with images of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and a Confederate flag. It is 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.”
Latham, who was elected in May along with several new city council members, said the monument is divisive in the city of 12,300, where about 57% of residents are black and 40% white.
Some local residents believe the monument should be placed in a Confederate cemetery in Grenada.
The lawsuit includes a letter from Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, a Republican who served as a state senator in 2004 and co-authored a law restricting alterations to war memorials.
“The intent of the bill is to honor the sacrifices of those who lost or risked their lives for democracy,” Chaney wrote Tuesday. “If it becomes necessary to move the monument, the intent of the bill is that it be moved to an appropriate location, one that is fitting and equitable, appropriate and respectful.”
The South has hundreds of Confederate monuments. Most were dedicated in the early 20th century, when groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to shape the historical narrative by glorifying the Lost Cause mythology of the Civil War.