Monumental Dilemma
Local officials investigate who can decide Confederate memorial’s fate
TEXARKANA, Texas — Calls from a veteran women’s group to move a Confederate monument that sits on land near Texarkana’s downtown federal building have officials in both Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas, digging through archives and conducting research.
Last week Bess Gamble Williams announced that the Texarkana Area Women Veterans Outreach Group is organizing a protest on Juneteenth at the site and said she hopes the demonstration will evoke a discussion about moving the monument to a museum-type setting where it can be observed with historical context.
In the wake of a global movement for racial justice and equality spurred by the death of George Floyd, confederate monuments and memorials to historical figures associated with racial oppression have been moved or toppled across the world.
Texarkana, Texas, Mayor Bob Bruggeman said research is ongoing into the matter and points to a document from 1914 that appears to grant “in trust” control of the triangle of land on which the monument sits to Daughters of the Confederacy, the mayors of both Texarkanas and their successors. The document calls for creation of a “Memorial Monument Commission” to have “care, control and supervision” of the land and monument.
The Jan. 30, 1914, document signed by J.T. Rosborough Jr. states that the property is to be used to display a monument “in commemoration of the Soldiers of the Southern Confederacy” and for “no other” purpose.
Rosborough was a white Confederate war veteran whose family owned slaves and a plantation in the area, according to Find A Grave and other genealogy websites. He joined at 18, rose to the rank of captain and was injured in the first battle of Bull Run, battle of Antietam and fought at Gettysburg, according to the Geni website.
The monument was dedicated April 21, 1918, just over four years after Rosborough signed the 1914 document. Rosborough died about five weeks after the monument’s dedication and is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, near downtown Texarkana.
While Bruggeman said the monument’s future may require input from the other entities mentioned in the 1914 document, Texarkana, Arkansas, City Manager Kenny Haskin disagrees. Haskin said the city of Texarkana, Arkansas, learned of the 1914 document on Wednesday and has undertaken a thorough examination of the city’s archives.
“Upon review of the city’s records, including the historical records of the city dating back to 1914, the city finds no evidence of this record, acceptance of role contemplated in the document, the appointment of any representative to serve on the commission contemplated by the document, nor the exercise by the city of care, control or supervision of such property at any time.
“Accordingly, based upon such review of the records, it does not appear that the City of Texarkana, Arkansas, has any controlling interest in the property or monument,” Haskin said.
The local chapter of United Daughters of the Confederacy has disbanded. A call Thursday to the organization’s Richmond, Virginia, headquarters reached a voice message that states, “Our staff is currently unavailable due to the reconstruction.”
The organization’s headquarters were set ablaze by protesters May 31, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch. The group did not respond to emails from the Gazette on Wednesday or Thursday.
The women veterans group’s call to move the monument has resulted in mixed responses on social media from community members. Some opponents of removing the structure have argued that it is unique in its appreciation of the mothers of soldiers who fought for the south and the continued practice of slavery.
Williams said much of the globe is grieving with George Floyd’s mother and spoke of black mothers who lived before the civil war.
“What about the enslaved mother who grieved when her baby was ripped from her arms at an auction block? Who grieves for her? Enslaved mothers were always dying from a broken heart, stripped of their language and their culture. Who grieves for them?” Williams asked.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the erection of confederate monuments spiked during two distinct periods of U.S. history.
“The first began around 1900 as Southern states were enacting Jim Crow laws to disento
franchise African Americans and re-segregate society after several decades of integration that followed Reconstruction. It lasted well into the 1920s, a period that also saw a strong revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Many of these monuments were sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The second period began in the mid-1950s and lasted until the late 1960s, the period encompassing the modern civil rights movement,” SPLC’s website states.
The Texarkana monument includes two marble statues. The top figure depicts a Confederate soldier and the lower figure is that of a Confederate soldier’s mother.
The inscription on the base of the soldier reads: “To our loyal Confederates.” The inscription on the mother’s base reads: “O great Confederate mothers, we would paint your names on monuments, that men may read them as the years go by and tribute pay to you, who bore and nurtured hero sons and gave them solace on that darkest day, when they came home, with broken swords and guns.”
The monument stands at 500 State Line Avenue, is just feet away from the Texas-Arkansas border and is near the entrance of Texarkana’s one-of-a-kind federal building. It houses federal courts for Texas and Arkansas, a post office and offices for other federal agencies. At the time of the monument’s dedication, a red brick building completed in 1893 that held a post office and courtroom was open for business. The existing federal building which stands in its place opened in 1933.
The first post office established in the area was built on Rosborough plantation land in the Wamba area north of town, according to Geni.com. A freed slave owned at birth by the Rosborough family, Ransom Rosborough, circulated a petition for a post office and served as postmaster for 15 years as a free man.
According to a Texas slave narrative website, Ransom Rosborough’s transcribed account includes the statement, “Master Rosborough owned ‘bout 500 slave when the war was over.”
Williams said the protest calling for the downtown Texarkana monument’s removal is scheduled for the evening of June 19, or Juneteenth.
While President Abraham
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect Jan. 1, 1863, it was finally read to enslaved AfricanAmericans in Galveston,
Texas, on June 19, 1865, by an officer of the Union army. The date has become a holiday celebrating the end of slavery in most states, including Texas and Arkansas. Efforts to make the date a national holiday have stalled in Congress.