Showing posts with label confederate monuments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label confederate monuments. Show all posts

Saturday, July 14, 2018

Anonymous donors are dismantling Confederate statues

Renaming schools and removing statues can be expensive, so donors are quietly stepping up to help communities pay.

Three elementary schools in Virginia formally dropped their Confederate affiliated names this week after the largely African American city of Petersburg received a $20,000 donation from an anonymous donor to cover the costs of changing the schools’ signs and other places where the names appeared. The schools previously stood as symbols of institutionalized racism, honoring various Confederate generals and war heroes. After the makeover, however, A.P Hill is now Cool Springs, Robert E. Lee is called Lakemont, and J.E.B. Stuart is Pleasants Lane.

The donation is emblematic of a new trend of anonymous giving which has funded the removal of historically bigoted statues or the renaming of buildings and institutions. In September 2015, an anonymous donor agreed to cover the costs of removing three Confederate statues and a monument in New Orleans. (The erroneously honored were Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, and the Battle of Liberty Place.) The process was coordinated through the Foundation for Louisiana, which accepted the donation and, in turn, worked with the city to cover costs.

In August 2016, Vanderbilt University completed the complicated process of removing the term “Confederate” from its previously named Confederate Memorial Hall. The university had been trying to do so for at least 15 years, but ran into legal trouble because that original name was part of a charitable gift received in 1933 from the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In 2005, a Tennessee court ruled that the school could only delete the name if it repaid the $50,000 gift, whose value had ballooned to $1.2 million current value. A pool of anonymous donors subsequently raised the cash. Efforts like this have steadily gained steam since a white nationalist rally of known hate groups turned deadly in Charlottesville in August 2017.

Read more: Anonymous donors are dismantling Confederate statues

Friday, August 18, 2017

Roger B. Taney statue removed from Maryland State House ground

A statue of the of the U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African-Americans has been removed from the grounds of the Maryland State House.

The statue of Roger B. Taney was lifted away by a crane at about 2 a.m. Friday. It was lowered into a truck and driven away.

A panel voted by email Wednesday to remove the statue, which was erected in 1872.

House Speaker Michael Busch, who voted for removal, wrote this week that the statue “doesn’t belong” on the grounds. His comments came after the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. Gov. Larry Hogan said this week that removing the statue was “the right thing to do.”

Roger B. Taney statue removed from Maryland State House ground

Monday, May 29, 2017

Baltimore Mayor: City Will ‘Look To’ Remove Confederate Monuments

New Orleans recently took down its Confederate monuments. Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh says she is considering doing the same thing in the city.

“The city does want to remove these,” Pugh told The Baltimore Sun. “We will take a closer look at how we go about following in the footsteps of New Orleans.”

Pugh said she’s been focused in her first months in office on implementing police reforms under the consent decree negotiated with the Department of Justice and finding more funds for the school system. She said she’s now turning her attention to other issues, such as the monuments.

“You name it, we’ve tackled it,” she said. “This is another one of those things that we will tackle as well.

“New Orleans has taken on this issue. It costs about $200,000 a statute to tear them down. … Maybe we can auction them?”

Read more: Pugh to explore removing Confederate monuments in Baltimore.