Dallas selling statue of Robert E. Lee

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Posted: May 24, 2019 04:24 AM CDT
Updated: May 24, 2019 04:24 AM CDT

DALLAS (AP) — Dallas leaders have decided to sell a statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was removed from public view nearly two years ago.

The Dallas City Council on Wednesday designated the 1935 sculpture by Alexander Phimister Proctor as surplus property to be sold to the highest bidder.

City leaders say the buyer must pay at least $450,000. That's what it cost to move the bronze sculpture from a park in September 2017 and put it into storage.

The statue was appraised at $950,000. Dallas authorities say that much money could pay for the planned removal of a Confederate War Memorial ...

https://www.wkrn.com/news/dallas-selling-statue-of-confederate-gen-robert-e-lee/2023681023

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1. Texas House Digs In on Confederate Monuments

STEPHEN YOUNG | MAY 17, 2019 | 4:00AM

Last week, the Texas Senate threw the state's Confederate fetishists a bone. Spurred in part by Dallas' votes to get rid of the Robert E. Lee statue from the park that used to be named after the treasonous general and remove the towering Confederate war memorial from Pioneer Park near City Hall, state senators passed a bill that would've made it a little harder for municipalities to get rid of their memorials to sedition and the Lost Cause. Now, the Texas House is pushing to give the Stars and Bars dead-enders a way better deal.

Had it been in effect when Dallas voted to dump its statues, the Senate version of the All Monuments Matter bill wouldn't have saved Lee or the Memorial. In both cases, more than two thirds of the City Council voted to remove the statue — 13-1 for Lee and 11-4 for the homage to the Confederate war dead.

If the House Culture, Recreation and Tourism Committee gets its way, the state, all cities in Texas and all counties in Texas would be banned from removing any monument or memorial that honors “an event or person of historic significance,” if that monument or memorial was put in place more than 40 years ago.

Younger monuments and memorials would be a bit more vulnerable. Changing anything on one between 20 and 40 years old would require a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate for tributes on state property, and local election to get rid of or modify any monument or memorial on municipal grounds ...

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-house-digs-in-on-confederate-monuments-11666469

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2. After Dallas commission upholds Confederate War Memorial removal, a lawsuit

Robert Wilonsky, City Columnist
MAY 16

Usually, city security doesn't put up metal detectors outside the council chambers for Plan Commission meetings. Last time I or anyone else can remember it happening was in 2013, when the commission shot down permits that would have allowed fracking in the floodplain in northwest Dallas. A simpler time.

The detectors were in place again Thursday because it was the commission's turn to hear The Case of the Confederate War Memorial — specifically, the appeals of Karen Pieroni and Chris Carter. Each paid their $700 to protest the Landmark Commission's determination that the Dallas City Council was correct in February when it said the 122-year-old Frank Teitch sculpture in Pioneer Park Cemetery is a "a non-contributing structure" inside its historic bounds ...

After five hours of waiting and two hours of debating, the Plan Commission unanimously sided with Landmark and the council ...

The city's attorney in this case, Charles Estee, explained ... the monument might be old, but it was not part of the cemetery in 1921, when the last person was buried there. The monument did not arrive until four decades later, when it was moved from its original perch in Old City Park to make room for R.L. Thornton Freeway. Nor were the statues intended to honor a Dallas pioneer ...

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/05/16/dallas-plan-commission-right-thing-vote-upholdconfederate-war-memorial-removal

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3. Texas Senate Votes to Limit Local Control Over Monuments

STEPHEN YOUNG | MAY 8, 2019 | 4:00AM

exas Senate Republicans are tired of uppity cities like Dallas taking down monuments to the Confederacy. That's the message from the state Capitol, where the Senate voted 19-12 along strict party lines to require a two-thirds, super majority vote from any municipal government that wants to get rid of their monument to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis or whatever other Lost Cause traitor the Daughters of the Confederacy decided to memorialize ...

As presented by Creighton, the bill would've required a local referendum before voting to get rid of one of the monuments to treason, or any other memorial of "historical significance more than 25 years old," but an amendment by Amarillo Republican Kel Seliger, one of the Senate's wild cards, restored some local control to the would-be process. The bill as amended would not have stopped Dallas from removing the Robert E. Lee statue from Lee Park — it voted 13-1 to do so — or voting to remove the Confederate War Memorial near City Hall. While it hasn't been removed, the ordinance calling for the memorial to be taken down passed 11-4 ...

“The bill that you’re carrying on the Senate floor today is disgraceful,” Houston Democrat Borris Miles told Creighton. “I ask that you consider some of the pain and heartache that we have to go through — myself and some of the brothers and sisters on this floor of color and what we’ve had to go through as it relates to our Texas history” ...

... Dallas Sen. Royce West read from the 1861 document in which Texas leaders outlined their reasons for leaving the United States and joining the Confederacy ...

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-senate-passes-bill-to-protect-confederate-statues-11659821