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"Dedicated to the Preservation of
Southern Heritage"
North Carolina Chapter
Confederate heritage groups score victory
03/15/01
KIM CHANDLER
News staff writer
MONTGOMERY - Confederate heritage advocates won a victory in the Legislature on Wednesday in their efforts to prevent Old South memorials from being moved.
The Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives voted 6-3 for a bill that would prohibit any monument or memorial on state-owned property from being relocated, removed, disturbed, desecrated or obscured. It also would prohibit things named after "historic" figures such as buildings, monuments and parks from being renamed after someone else.
Violation of the provisions would be a misdemeanor.
A Birmingham lawmaker warned that the legislation will ignite a tempest in the Alabama Legislature.
"This is going to be one of the most divisive bills in the 2001 legislative session," Rep. George Perdue said. "This is going to be another Selma throughout the state of Alabama."
Michael Chappell, director of the Confederate Heritage Association, said some Southerners were angered when the Selma City Council voted to move a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from outside a building near a racially mixed neighborhood.
Forrest was famed as two types of wizards - "the wizard of the saddle" for his battlefield exploits and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. A plaque on the statue refers to him as a Southern hero.
The heritage group was also worried that Confederate markers might not be so prominent after an upcoming revamp of the Alabama Capitol grounds.
"Are we going to eventually wipe out all Confederate history in Alabama? Is that the goal?" Chappell asked lawmakers.
Perdue unsuccessfully urged the panel to strike the provision against relocation and renaming. Local officials can best make those decisions, he said. "There are valid reasons for both renaming and removing," Perdue said.
Perdue promised to filibuster the bill when it comes to the House floor, saying it is an embarrassment to the state.
"The cost of the nation peering down on Selma and Alabama is a deep cost you cannot measure in dollars and cents," he said.
David Cooksey of Hoover told lawmakers he was concerned Confederate markers on the Capitol grounds will be relegated to less-visible spots during a revamp paid for by a federal project spotlighting the 1965 Voting Rights March. The monuments are appropriate outside the place where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the first Confederate president, he said.
"It after all was the birthplace of the Confederacy," Cooksey said. "Outside forces want to hide, distort and destroy history."
Lee Warner, director of the Alabama Historical Commission, has said no decisions have been made about what will go where around the Capitol grounds. The commission is seeking input on the design, he said.
Monuments on the Capitol grounds include a star on the place where Davis was inaugurated, a monument to the Civil War; a memorial to Alabama war veterans and a statue of James Marion Sims, "the father of modern gynecology" who briefly practiced medicine in Montgomery.
The Birmingham News
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