Will the Confederate statue come down in Gulfport? Supervisors discuss next steps
The Harrison County Board of Supervisors is exploring a more suitable location for the Confederate monument outside the Gulfport courthouse.
At their meeting just a few hundred feet from the contested statue, the supervisors directed board attorney Tim Holleman to look into options for relocating the statue, including asking Beauvoir about leasing a small area and placing the statute there.
Supervisor Kent Jones asked at the last meeting that Holleman draw up resolutions that would move the monument from courthouse grounds, remove the state flag with its Confederate emblem from county properties and ask the Legislature to replace the flag.
But the flag has already come down. The state Legislature cast historic votes over the last weekend in June that retired the flag. With his fellow supervisors’ permission, Jones, the only Black board member, removed the state flag from the courthouse on June 29 and said the flag would be coming down from all county properties.
Any potential move to relocate the statue is complicated by a 2004 state law that says monuments to the “War Between the States,” among other military conflicts, cannot be moved unless a “more suitable” location is found.
Opinions from the attorney general say monuments covered under the law must be relocated on public property, but these opinions are not legally enforceable.
At the meeting on Monday, Holleman said the board needs to develop a plan for the monument’s relocation before it can take any action to remove it. After developing such a plan, the board may also need to get permission from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Holleman added.
He said he would research possibilities and report back to the board in the next few weeks.
“Now that’s not going to happen by next Monday,” he said.
“It’s already been there 100 years,” said Supervisor Beverly Martin.
One possible option, Holleman said, would be leasing a small piece of land from Beauvoir so that it would be classified as county property, and placing the monument there.
Ahead of the meeting, Martin emphasized that the state law constrains possible action by the board.
“The public just needs to realize (the ultimate decision on the monument) doesn’t belong to us,” Martin said.
‘A question mark’
Before Holleman presented his research on the issue, three people spoke on the monument during the public comment period. Pastor John Whitfield of Morning Star Baptist Church argued that “symbols and images” like the monument and the 1894 state flag are important.
He pointed out that the statue was erected at the height of Jim Crow, when “people of color became enslaved legally. Maybe not with chains, but with symbols and images.”
The statue “has a place, just not at the door of justice of Harrison County,” Whitfield said. “It leaves a question mark in the minds of some as to whether justice can be obtained.”
Two other speakers, Judy Phillips and Wallace Mason, argued that removing the statue constituted “the removal and destruction of history,” though none of the people calling for the monument to be removed from the courthouse have sought its destruction.
“You don’t feel it’s fair to put it there because of Jim Crow laws, slavery, whatever other excuse people come up with,” Mason said, addressing the proponents of removing the monument.
Mason claimed incorrectly that the county could remove the monument if it was standing in the way of a public works project, for example, but not because “a person or a group of people are offended.”
Holleman said that state law does not dictate the reasons for which a county or municipality may decide to remove a monument.
“If the governing authority determines there’s a more appropriate location, they can (move) it,” he said.
Confederate monuments have come down across the South since George Floyd died under a police officer’s knee May 25 in Minneapolis. Demonstrations followed across the country as support built for the Black Lives Matter movement and racial justice.
On June 6, demonstrators in Gulfport made removing the courthouse monument one of their primary demands. In Alabama, Birmingham and Mobile have removed Confederate monuments in the last few weeks, and others have come down in Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky.
At a protest against the Gulfport monument on June 19, members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups showed up to defend it, claiming they had heard online that protesters wanted to destroy it. Demonstrators emphasized that they want the monument to come down legally, through action by the Board of Supervisors. The event was largely calm, aside from a few shouted interruptions during speeches advocating the monument’s removal.
The monument was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, with significant funding from the county, in 1911. At the time, the Daughters were presiding over a campaign to build monuments across the South as part of an effort to argue that the Confederacy’s purpose and conduct in the war were noble and ought to be remembered as such for generations.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified nearly 2,000 Confederate monuments around the country. According to the SPLC, the Harrison County monument is the only such statue in Mississippi’s six southernmost counties. But the region is full of other markers honoring the Confederacy and its leadership, including streets and schools named for Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America.
In recent days, there have also been calls for the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College to change the name of its Jefferson Davis campus.
This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 11:07 AM.
