Coastal county to vote on Confederate monument’s future

GULFPORT, Miss. — A coastal Mississippi county will vote Monday on what to do with a Confederate monument that has been standing in front of the county courthouse since 1911 and has become a flashpoint of controversy in recent months.

The monument at the Harrison County courthouse in Gulfport has been the site of protests this year as attention across the country has focused on whether such monuments are appropriate for public spaces.

The Sun-Herald reported Friday that the county’s only Black supervisor, Kent Jones, asked on Monday during a meeting that the issue of whether to move the monument be added to the agenda for December 14. Other members of the board agreed.

“I just didn’t want to go into 2021 with this thing hanging over us,” Jones told the newspaper. “The most important thing is that the Harrison County Board of Supervisors make a decision, right wrong or indifferent. And I just thought the time was now to do it.”

Jones first brought up the issue of whether the monument should be moved in June.

At that time, the death of George Floyd had refocused national attention on racial injustice and the placement of Confederate monuments. Floyd, a handcuffed Black man, died May 25 after Derek Chauvin, a white officer, used his knee to pin Floyd to the ground. His death, which was captured on video, sparked national protests.

Since Jones first brought the issue up, the county has studied where the monument could go if supervisors voted to remove it.

Under state law, local governments must find a “more suitable location” if they opt to move war monuments. The state attorney general’s office has determined that means any new location for a monument must be on land the county owns.