No plans to remove Polk County's monument for Confederate soldiers
One of the outcomes of the tragic events in Charlottesville, Virginia in past weeks provided a catalyst for cities across the country to make moves to remove historical markers and monuments dedicated to Confederate veterans.
Cities and states across the country are deciding what to do with these markers, and whether they should stay or go.
Last week following the deaths in Charlottesville, leaders in Baltimore, Maryland, ordered the overnight removal of Confederate monuments in the latest move by bigger cities to get rid of memorials. The day before on Aug. 15 in Gainesville, Florida, the Daughters of the Confederacy removed a statue of a Confederate soldier known as "Ole Joe," and in Durham, North Carolina, protesters used a rope to pull down a Confederate monument dedicated in 1924.
In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper says Confederate monuments "should come down" and wants the legislature to repeal a law preventing state and local governments from removing them permanently and limiting their relocation. He posted that on a website on Tuesday.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe released a statement Wednesday saying monuments of Confederate leaders have become "flashpoints for hatred, division and violence."
He encouraged local governments and Virginia's General Assembly to take down those monuments and put them in museums.
These moves and more were made by leaders across the country in the wake of violent protests in Charlottesville that ended in violence and the death of a woman after a car plowed into protesters, ending in the death of Heather Heyer.
Two Virginia State Patrol officers, Lt. H. Jay Cullen, 48 and Trooper Pilot Berke M.M. Bates, 40, were killed when their helicopter crashed following aerial observation of the Charlottesville area on Aug. 12 during the riot between protesters over the Robert E. Lee monument in Emancipation Park, and the ensuing death of Heyer and 19 others were injured after a car plowed into counterprotesters who had taken to the streets to decry what was believed to be the country's biggest gathering of white nationalists in at least a decade. The driver of the car, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old Ohio man described as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, was arrested and charged with murder and other offenses.
Locally, the lone monument to Confederate soldiers who served from Polk County is likely to remain in place unless a decision is made to do so otherwise.
County manager Matt Denton said that thus far, the idea of bringing down the monument hadn't been brought up by anyone since the violence in Charlottesville sparked other communities and states to pull down their statues.
"Right now we have no plans to do anything with the statue," he said. "I know that right now monuments are stirring pretty intense emotions, and I think it might be a conversation we need to have as a community and is something worth looking into."
The monument that sits on the Polk County Courthouse lawn was dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy's Cedartown chapter in 1906 to honor confederate veterans. That chapter, No. 491, is no longer active.
Since the statue sits on the grounds between the two Polk County Courthouses, it falls under the jurisdiction of the county without a United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter active locally to claim it.
The Polk County monument is one of at least 170 across the state, including a number of state-based memorials in National Battlefields and in municipal spaces.
In the local area alone, there is a monument in Rome to Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a memorial at the Bartow County Courthouse, cemeteries, a Statue of Confederate General Patrick Cleburne in Ringgold Gap, a number of memorials at Chickamauga National Battlefield, at Kennesaw Mountain, among others.
Among the most prominent of all Confederate memorials is on the side of Stone Mountain, where the depictions of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson.
Democratic front-runner for governor Stacey Abrams posted several tweets Tuesday saying the carving at the tourist attraction Stone Mountain Park and other Confederate statues and monuments around the state should be removed.