What Follows Confederate Statues? One Mississippi City's Fight
GREENWOOD, Miss. (AP) — For more than a century, one of Mississippi's largest and most elaborate Confederate monuments has looked out over the lawn at the courthouse in the center of Greenwood, a Black-majority city with a history of civil rights protests and clashes. Protesters have demonstrated at the base of the towering pillar with six Confederate figures — some residents demanding removal amid a racial reckoning across the country, others advocating for the statue's protection as a piece of history.
Now, after years of debate, a new statue will be erected in Greenwood — one of Emmett Till, the Black 14-year-old who was brutally beaten and shot in 1955 by white men just 10 miles from the city. The likeness of Till, whose death is still under federal investigation, will be one of only a handful of statues of African Americans in Mississippi, where dozens of Confederate monuments still dot the landscape at courthouses, town squares and other prominent locations.
Greenwood is one of hundreds of cities and towns nationwide grappling with painful, expensive questions: What should be done with these tributes to the Civil War and the Confederate soldiers who fought in it? And, what monuments should go up in their place to represent the community?
Across Mississippi, multiple places have voted to remove monuments; the few that have followed through found it costly, with a $1 million bill at the University of Mississippi. In Charlottesville, Virginia, a larger-than-life figure of Gen. Robert E. Lee was recently carted away by truck — nearly four years after a deadly, racist rally there. Dozens of Confederate statues fell across the country during the 2020 protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis — many in liberal-leaning urban centers, while those in rural or conservative places stood.
Read more: https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2021/aug/09/what-follows-confederate-statues-one-mississippi-c/
For more than a century, one of Mississippi's largest and most elaborate Confederate monuments has looked out over the lawn at the courthouse in the center of Greenwood, a Black-majority city with a history of civil rights protests and clashes. Photo by Donna Ladd