AL: Lowndes County Commission Votes Unanimously to Remove Confederate Monument

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Posted: Jul 1, 2020 11:38 AM CDT
Updated: Jul 1, 2020 11:41 AM CDT by Alabama News Network Staff

Many towns and cities around the nation have been removing Confederate Monuments after racial tensions heightened around the country. Lowndes County followed suit by voting unanimously Monday to remove a confederate statue from Hayneville Town Square. Lowndes County Administrator Jacqueline Thomas confirms the statue has since been removed.

County Commission Chairman Carnell McAlpine says the monument was installed in the 1940s but says the county with pay the $25,000 fine if it comes to that point ...

https://www.alabamanews.net/2020/07/01/lowndes-county-commission-votes-unanimously-to-remove-confederate-monument-from-hayneville-town-square/

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1. GA: Confederate monument removed from county courthouse

by: AP News
Posted: Jul 1, 2020 / 11:16 AM EDT / Updated: Jul 1, 2020 / 11:16 AM EDT

CONYERS, Ga (AP) — Another Confederate monument has been taken down from outside a Georgia county courthouse.

Rockdale County Commission chairman Oz Nesbitt announced the removal on Tuesday and it was gone by midnight.

Nesbitt invited the community to see the removal at 10 p.m. ...

https://www.wsav.com/news/local-news/georgia-news/confederate-monument-removed-from-georgia-county-courthouse/

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2. SC: Orangeburg City Council votes in favor of removing Confederate statue

ORANGEBURG, S.C. (NBC Newschannel) – City Councilmembers in the City of Orangeburg unanimously voted to remove the statue of a Confederate soldier on Tuesday.

The 30-foot tall statue located in Courthouse Square was built in 1893 to honor Orangeburg Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War.

Members of the Orangeburg Revitalization Coalition say they’ve been asking the City Council to remove the statue for a while now and some residents say the statue belongs in a museum not the center of downtown ...

Council members also unanimously voted to rename John C. Calhoun Drive, which runs through a portion of downtown ...

https://www.counton2.com/news/south-carolina-news/orangeburg-city-council-votes-in-favor-of-removing-confederate-statue-renaming-john-c-calhoun-drive/

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3. NC: Lexington Mayor wants to relocate Confederate statue

Author: Grace Holland
Published: 7:27 PM EDT June 30, 2020
Updated: 8:51 AM EDT July 1, 2020

LEXINGTON, N.C. — A bronze Confederate soldier has stood guard over Lexington's Main Street for 115 years, but city leaders are calling for it to be relocated.

"When you drive into our city square, that should not be the most prominent thing that you see," said Lexington Mayor Newell Clark.

The Confederate statue sits opposite the Old Davidson County Courthouse among other war memorials in the square, but it stands taller and is more noticeable than the others ...

https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/lexington-confederate-statue-mayor-city-council-relocating-removing/83-7e1c0821-bf74-4fb8-b2e6-e529c9bdbd09

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4. GA: Gwinnett solicitor files to remove Confederate statue in Lawrenceville

NEWS 20 hours ago
By Arielle Kass, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Calling a statue in Lawrenceville that honors the Confederacy a “public nuisance,” Gwinnett County’s solicitor has filed a request to have the monument removed from the city’s square.

The move comes after a DeKalb County judge ordered a Confederate monument in Decatur be removed because of the risk to public safety. That monument was taken down June 18.Brian Whiteside, the Gwinnett solicitor general, said in a Tuesday complaint that the case is about preventing injury and death. He said in the filing that relocating the monument “will prevent injury and unrest while at the same time protecting and preserving the monument in compliance with — and indeed fulfillment of — Georgia law” ...

https://www.ajc.com/news/local/gwinnett-solicitor-files-remove-confederate-statue-lawrenceville/XGl0Wir9mGG8qwOc5jXX3M/

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5. WV: Community reacts to a Confederate monument being taken down in Charleston

by MEGAN BSHARAH
Tuesday, June 30th 2020

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS/WVAH) — After a plaque with names of former members of the Kanawha Riflemen was removed from a Confederate monument Monday in Charleston, there has been a lot of community reaction on either side of the issue.

"It's one small step for the city of Charleston. It's one giant step for the state of West Virginia," Howard Swint said.

Swint has been advocating for the removal of Confederate statues for years and was happy to learn about the Kanawha Riflemen plaque being taken down.

"These monuments, in effect, represent hate speech," Swint said. "It was an effort that was over a century old across the deep south all geared towards forestalling equal rights" ...

https://wchstv.com/news/local/heavy-reaction-to-a-confederate-monument-being-taken-down-in-charleston

[Brother Buzz]

6. What is this $25,000 fine?

I assume there's a pissing match between different government bodies, but the story doesn't say squat

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9. Alabama Memorial Preservation Act, I think

Alabama Code Title 41. State Government § 41-9-235
... 2(d) If the Attorney General determines that an entity exercising control of public property has renamed a memorial school or has relocated, removed, altered, renamed, or otherwise disturbed an architecturally significant building, memorial building, memorial street, or monument from that public property without first obtaining a waiver from the committee as required by this article, or failed to comply with the conditions and instructions issued by the committee upon the grant of a waiver pursuant to this section, the entity shall be fined twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) for each violation ... https://codes.findlaw.com/al/title-41-state-government/al-code-sect-41-9-235.html

[Brother Buzz]

13. That's cheap at twice the price

Methinks the Alabama Memorial Preservation committee is going to sit on their collective butts and wait until after the November elections to see how things shake out.

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7. NC: Time capsule discovered in base of Raleigh Confederate memorial statue

By: WSOCTV.com News Staff
Updated: June 30, 2020 - 1:03 PM

RALEIGH — Crews removing the base of the Confederate monument in downtown Raleigh discovered a time capsule, WRAL reported.

The State Department of Natural and Cultural Resources has not opened it yet ...

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/time-capsule-discovered-downtown-raleigh-confederate-memorial-statue-base/CMXBF5R3QFE75GGIPYOPWYVF5Q/

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8. VA: City to remove time capsule from Downtown Norfolk Confederate monument

By: Web Staff Posted at 9:13 PM, Jun 29, 2020 and last updated 9:13 PM, Jun 29, 2020

NORFOLK, Va. - As protests centered around Confederate monuments in Hampton Roads continue, the City of Norfolk will remove a 19th century time capsule from the site where the monument on Main Street once stood.

The time capsule is a metal box containing artifacts from 1899, city officials said. It will be removed from the site where the Johnny Reb Confederate War Monument used to stand at 9 a.m. on Tuesday ...

https://www.wtkr.com/news/city-to-remove-time-capsule-from-downtown-norfolk-confederate-monument-site

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10. VA: Crews on scene preparing for removal of Jackson statue on Monument Avenue

BY MARK ROBINSON Richmond Times-Dispatch 52 min ago

Crews prepared to remove the Stonewall Jackson statue from its pedestal on Monument Avenue Wednesday at the direction of Mayor Levar Stoney ....

https://www.richmond.com/news/local/stoney-introduces-resolution-to-remove-richmond-owned-confederate-monuments-immediately/article_4f139f30-c849-54d5-b768-de4ac5a02c22.html

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11. That will make Needy Amin very unhappy

Good.

Look for the Republicans to execute several rhetorical backflips to explain why local governments shouldn't have the power to remove statues of traitors in their public spaces.

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15. Donny Two Scoops always seems very unhappy

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16. Probably all that winning

He's gotten sick of it. Maybe he should just resign.

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19. The give-away is all that whining. Happy people don't whine.

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12. TX: Beaumont Confederate monument comes down

By Kaitlin Bain, Kim Brent and Chris Moore Updated 8:33 pm CDT, Monday, June 29, 2020

With little fanfare and a few onlookers, a Beaumont city work crew on Monday took down a 108-year-old statue dedicated to the “deeds of valor, sacrifices and achievements” of soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War.

Preparations to get the heavy machinery into Wiess Park began about 8 a.m. Once in place, it took fewer than 10 minutes for workers to attach a rope around the anonymous Confederate soldier and begin bringing it down from the a 30-foot stone pedestal ...

https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Beaumont-begins-removing-Confederate-monument-15373513.php

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14. VA: Daughters of the Confederacy asks for return of Leesburg Confederate monument

Neal Augenstein
June 30, 2020, 2:37 PM

The Loudoun Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which built the statue of a Confederate soldier on courthouse grounds in downtown Leesburg, has asked Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall to let the chapter take it back.

Under a Virginia law taking effect Wednesday, July 1, localities in Virginia can decide whether to remove Confederate statues. Randall had planned to begin that process this week.

“The Daughters are saying they’d like to retrieve their statue,” Randall told WTOP ...

https://wtop.com/loudoun-county/2020/06/as-removal-nears-group-that-built-leesburg-confederate-monument-asks-for-it-back/

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17. NC: Privately Owned Confederate Statue and Monument Removed

BY DAVID IVEY FAYETTEVILLE
PUBLISHED 8:27 PM ET JUN. 27, 2020

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- A Confederate statue that has stood in several locations around the city since 1902 was taken down on Saturday.

The bronze statue of a Confederate soldier holding a gun stood 23-feet-tall and featured two small cannons. It was located in the Haymount community and is privately owned ...

The owners made the decision that now was the best time to remove it before someone got hurt trying to pull it down ...

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/triangle-sandhills/news/2020/06/28/privately-owned-confederate-statue-and-monument-removed

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18. FL: Coup led by white supremacists led to placement of Pensacola's Confederate monument

Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal Published 6:00 a.m. CT June 29, 2020

A 50-foot tall Virginia granite monument topped by a statue of a Confederate soldier has overlooked downtown Pensacola from one of the highest spots for 129 years, but that time may be coming to an end next month.

When the monument was unveiled before a cheering crowd of an estimated 10,000 people on an overcast day in June 1891, the South and city of Pensacola had just undergone one of the most politically tumultuous times since the Civil War as former leaders of the Confederacy reasserted their dominance over the Southern political system under the banner of white supremacy ...

The City Council is set to vote on July 14 during a special meeting whether to remove the monument and rename Lee Square to its original name of Florida Square ...

https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2020/06/29/coup-white-supremacist-led-pensacolas-confederate-monument/3256660001/

[crickets]

20. K&R for visibility.