Bill opens door to remove Confederate monuments
The legislation would give a local “public entity” that owns a monument the authority to remove it.
It would give a local “public entity” that owns a monument the authority to remove it.
Democrats in Georgia’s House of Representatives and Senate prefiled legislation Wednesday to make it possible to remove Confederate monuments from places such as Stone Mountain.
State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, prefiled house Bill 650, while state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, pre-filed Senate Bill 302. State law prohibits the defacing, removal or concealing of monuments to the Confederate States of America, including the carving on Stone Mountain.
If either bill passes, local governments or the “public entity” that owns monuments at Stone Mountain and other places around the state would have the authority to remove those monuments.
“Citizens in the city of Decatur and DeKalb County have voiced their opinions and asked me to introduce legislation to allow local governments to decide to remove or modify monuments that are located in public spaces,” Oliver said in a statement. “This legislation would simply return this decision making authority to Georgia’s cities and counties and provide more local control.”
The debate over removing monuments to the Confederacy has been a recurring hot button topic in recent years in light of racially charged incidents such as a 2015 shooting at an African-American church in Charleston or the clashes between protesters at a monument in Charlottesville earlier this year.
Officials in Decatur have been looking at removing a monument in that city, but a bigger debate has centered around Stone Mountain and the carving of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis.
Two years ago, a local artist made headlines for a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to add OutKast to the carving, but the debate took a more political turn earlier this year when two candidates for governor took different, and public, stances on the issue.
Former state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, one of two leading candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination in neat year’s gubernatorial election, said the carving
should be removed in a series of posts on Twitter.
“The visible image of Stone Mountain’s edifice remains a blight on our state,” Abrams said in one tweet.
That prompted a backlash from Cumming-based state Sen. Michael Williams, one of several Republicans seeking that party’s nomination for governor, who called Abrams’ statements “nonsense.”
“I want to know where Stacey draws the line,” Williams said in a statement at the time. “Will she demand we blow up the Jefferson Memorial and knock down the Washington Monument? Let me make myself clear: I do not support defacing Stone Mountain or any of our monuments and I do not support rewriting Georgia’s history.”