Audra D.S. Burch and Alan Blinder

<h1>Randall L. Woodfin, the 37-year-old mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, made an unlikely sales pitch the other day after glancing toward some black-and-white photos of his city’s segregated past.</h1>

A 52-foot-tall Confederate monument, a sandstone obelisk erected in 1905 and within sight of City Hall, is available, he said. For free.

“Any Confederate museum that wants this thing can have it,” Woodfin said in an interview at City Hall. “I’ll give it to them right now. Hell, I’m even willing to give them whatever they need to get it to them.”

But Woodfin, and the state of Alabama, know such a transfer would not be without political and legal consequences. Almost 154 years after the end of the Civil War, the country is still quarreling — in state capitols and courtrooms, on college campuses and around town squares — over how, or whether, to commemorate the side that lost.

Those stubborn debates bubbled up again this month in Winston-Salem and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and in Birmingham, among the most progressive parts of a region that has struggled to reconcile its history with its modern ambitions.

“This is one of America’s most important conversations. In many ways, we have only begun to talk critically about the landscape that has existed in this country for a very long time that romanticizes the era of the slavery and the role of the Confederacy,” said Bryan Stevenson, the leading force behind the newly built National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

Critics of Confederate monuments have won dramatic victories that were almost inconceivable a decade ago: the lowering of the battle flag outside the South Carolina State House, the removals of four of New Orleans’ towering statues, the renaming of city streets in Atlanta and Hollywood, Florida.

But some states have rushed to shield Confederate tributes from removal. More than 1,700 “publicly sponsored symbols” of the Confederacy remain, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. A new protection proposal, brought by state Rep. Mike Hill, a Republican, is pending in the Florida Legislature.

And even as dozens of Confederate statues have been unearthed and hauled away from parks and other public grounds, many others are being quietly discovered. The list of Confederate symbols newly identified or counted now outnumbers the ones that have been removed, an SPLC study shows.

In Florida, Hill was among the leaders of a rally in Pensacola against the proposed removal of a cross on public grounds in June 2017 when he made the decision: If elected to the state House of Representatives, he would work to strengthen memorial protections.

Two months later, after the mayor called for the removal of a 50-foot Confederate monument on Lee Square, Hill said his mission grew more urgent. So in his first act after his 2018 election victory, Hill filed a bill making it illegal to remove “remembrances” on public property erected on or after 1822 except for repairs — or relocation to an equally prominent place.

The third-generation veteran said the bill is designed to protect the monuments, memorials and flags that honor soldiers and veterans — including those that fought in the Civil War.

As an African-American, Hill knows he is at odds with the traditional argument for removing Confederate symbols from public spaces, personally rejecting the idea they are hurtful.

“Our history is what makes us up as a people. We can learn from the ugly parts so that it can never happen again,” said Hill, who founded one of Florida’s Tea Party chapters. “Tearing down a monument does not create unity; it actually creates more division.”

In North Carolina, yet another chapter of the Confederate monuments battle is exploding, in a booming city and on a picturesque college campus some 75 miles apart.

On Monday, the chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ordered the removal of the remains of the toppled “Silent Sam” Confederate monument off the college grounds for community safety — and announced her resignation. Chancellor Carol L. Folt, who just months ago officially apologized of behalf of the university for the “profound injustices of slavery,” planned to retire in the spring after graduation.

Shocked by the surprise announcement, the UNC System Board of Governors, pushed her leave up to the end of January. Folt had requested the removal of the statue’s base, which included plaques memorializing university students who fought for the Confederacy.

The final resting place for “Silent Sam,” whose status has been complicated by state law, remains unsettled, but officials hope to announce a plan by March. The bronze soldier, unveiled in 1913, was toppled by protesters last summer.

And in December, the city of Winston-Salem ordered the removal of a statue of a Confederate soldier in the city’s downtown to a nearby cemetery where 36 Confederate soldiers are buried. In a letter to the North Carolina Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the owners of the statue, the city attorney cast the move as in public safety issue based on recent vandalism and the potential for violent confrontations.

The city is considering legal action if the statue is not moved by Jan. 31. The United Daughters of the Confederacy has vowed to fight back, calling the city’s demand “heavy-handed” and “dishonorable” in a statement. The statue was erected in 1905 on the old courthouse grounds, property now privately owned. The current landowner also wants the statue removed.

“I know there are strong issues on both sides of this issue, people who want it there because of history,'” Mayor Allen Joines said. “On the other hand, this monument represents oppression and the subjugation of a people and I know that’s hurtful.”

North Carolina’s struggle has not yet devolved into a legal battle, but Birmingham’s Confederate obelisk, shunned by the mayor, has. In 2017, Alabama enacted a law that forbade memorials to be “relocated, removed, altered, renamed or otherwise disturbed” if they had stood on public property for at least 40 years.

Then came the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and Woodfin’s predecessor as mayor, William A. Bell Sr., ordered that the base of the towering Confederate monument be shrouded in plywood. The state promptly sued to protect it, and asked that Birmingham be fined $25,000 a day.

Last Monday night, Judge Michael G. Graffeo, of the Circuit Court in Jefferson County, struck down the statute. Under the law, Graffeo wrote, “the people of Birmingham cannot win.”

“No matter how much they lobby city officials, the state has placed a thumb on the scale for a pro-Confederacy message, and the people, acting through their city, will never be able to dissociate themselves from that message entirely,” the judge wrote.

The judge’s order, which the state is expected to appeal, sparked a refreshed furor in Alabama over what should come of monuments.

The sponsor of the embattled legislation, state Sen. Gerald Allen, a Republican from Tuscaloosa County, said in a statement that the law was “meant to thoughtfully preserve the entire story of Alabama’s history for future generations.” And he harshly criticized Graffeo.

“Judges are not kings, and judicial activism is no substitute for the democratic process,” said Allen, who, in a 2016 interview with The New York Times, argued that it was “important that we tell the story of what has happened in this country because that’s what shaped and molded us as a nation.”

A spokesman for Attorney General Steven T. Marshall, whose office brought the case against Birmingham in August 2017, did not respond to a request for comment.

Woodfin, who defeated Bell within months of the Charlottesville attack and the Alabama lawsuit, is weary of a broader fight that he argued should have been settled long ago. A deepening legal battle with the state, he suggested, was unhelpful and disappointing.

“In my mind, this is the opposite of moving forward,” he said. “The statue was erected well post-Civil War, in a city that was founded after the Civil War. To me, it seemed like it was intentionally sending a signal to the public about revisionist history, and a message to what did exist, even if it was wrong.”

The monument, which was originally dedicated by a Birmingham area chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, is hardly the only challenge.

On Monday, state offices will be closed throughout Alabama. The government will be marking the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This article originally appeared in <a id="c4ae225e-55f5-4116-a211-f1ba7d6a022a" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/confederate-monuments-legal-battles.html">The New York Times</a>.

Fate of Confederate monuments stalled by tit for tat legal battles

A 52-foot-tall Confederate monument, a sandstone obelisk erected in 1905 and within sight of City Hall, is available, he said. For free.

<h1>BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Randall L. Woodfin, the 37-year-old mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, made an unlikely sales pitch the other day after glancing toward some black-and-white photos of his city’s segregated past.</h1>

Critics of Confederate monuments have won dramatic victories that were almost inconceivable a decade ago: the lowering of the battle flag outside the South Carolina State House, the removals of four towering statues in New Orleans, the renaming of city streets in Atlanta and Hollywood, Florida.

Hill, a third-generation veteran said the bill was designed to protect the monuments, memorials and flags that honor soldiers and veterans — including those who fought in the Civil War.

“Our history is what makes us up as a people,” said Hill, who founded one of Florida’s Tea Party chapters. "We can learn from the ugly parts so that it can never happen again. Tearing down a monument does not create unity; it actually creates more division.”

Last week, , the chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ordered the removal of the remains of the toppled “Silent Sam” Confederate monument off the college grounds for community safety — and announced her resignation. Chancellor Carol L. Folt, who just months ago officially apologized of behalf of the university for the “profound injustices of slavery,” planned to retire in the spring after graduation.

This article originally appeared in <a id="a9199a7f-642b-4241-a237-1d6ea47dd9d2" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/confederate-monuments-legal-battles.html">The New York Times</a>.

Shifting battlegrounds delay reckoning over Confederate statues

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Audra D.S. Burch and Alan Blinder

Articles written by the author

Fate of Confederate monuments stalled by tit for tat legal battles

Shifting battlegrounds delay reckoning over Confederate statues