Harrison County Confederate monument protest turns tense as militia group arrives
Harrison County’s Confederate monument was surrounded Thursday evening by advocates for its removal and by those who want it to stay right where it is, just outside the courthouse in downtown Gulfport.
Members of the milita group the Southern Defense Force, wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying weapons, showed up, too.
As John Whitfield, pastor of Morningstar Baptist Church, addressed the crowd, members of the progressive group the Mississippi Rising Coalition gathered at the base of the monument, where counter-protesters were already sitting.
One member of Mississippi Rising held a sign reading, “The courthouse is for justice, not racism,” as a man behind her held up a billowing Confederate battle flag.
“I’m asking that it be removed before somebody comes to deface it or tear it down,” Whitfield said. “So I’m calling on you, the Harrison County Board of Supervisors, to do what you are constitutionally bound to do, place this on the agenda, and take a vote up or down.”
Whitfield added that the statue was erected in 1911, following a period of increased economic and political power for Black Americans in the South. Statues like this one, he said, were intended “to send a message to African Americans... that you are not considered part of the citizenry.”
Supporters of the monument say it honors their ancestors and their history.
“I don’t think this statue should be offensive to anyone,” said Bruce Roberts. “He was, like my ancestor, a common, simple man.”
Both groups have spent the summer wondering whether and when the Harrison County supervisors might hold a vote to move the monument, as activists have sought since June.
Although the board has discussed the issue, there has been little movement. Jeffrey Hulum III, one of the organizers of Thursday’s protest as well as another similar protest in June, which also drew pro-monument counter-protesters, said he was tired of waiting on the board to act.
“To us, it seems like the can is being kicked down the road, because they refuse to even take up a vote on it,” Hulum said. “If they move it, and they don’t have no place to put it, they can put it in a warehouse. At least give the community and the citizens a vote, and respect the vote. If they vote not to move it, we’ll respect it.”
Tense moments
During the protest, one of the pro-monument demonstrators fell from where he was standing at the base of the monument. He appeared to hit his head on a car parked near the statue. Hulum, a military veteran, rushed towards the man. Hulum offered water and helped him wash his face.
One pro-monument demonstrator’s cellphone rang in the middle of a speech arguing for the monument to be taken down. His ring tone was “Dixie.”
During the speeches, members of the Southern Defense Force, a “constitutional conservative” group with members throughout Mississippi and the South, arrived and spread out on either side of the monument, keeping some distance from protesters. They wore bullet-proof vests and carried guns.
Some protesters, both for and against the monument, also carried guns.
One member, who heads the group’s chapter in Forrest County and declined to give his name, said it was the first monument demonstration they had attended. He said the Southern Defense Force didn’t take a position on the monument.
“We’re here to make sure nothing goes wrong,” he said. “You’ve seen the country. Stuff gets out of hand all the time.”
The presence of people carrying weapons and wearing military fatigues was less than reassuring to protesters who had come to call for the monument’s removal.
“I am terrified,” one woman said.
“What is this dude here with this dog for?” asked another demonstrator.
At one point, as demonstrators calling for the monument’s removal were yelling criticisms of the militia, a member rushed towards the group around the monument and yelled that they were “a great disgrace” to the country.
After the militia’s leader pulled the member back and reprimanded him for cursing, the leader turned towards the demonstrators.
“We all fought for our country, you little pansy,” he said.
When the militia left, the demonstrators who want the monument to stay waved and shouted goodbye.
“Thank you,” one woman said.
Jeremy Bridges, a board member of Black Lives Matter Mississippi, came to the demonstration to show support for the push to remove the monument. He saw people standing at the top level of the parking lot, a floor above the monument, positioned like snipers ready to shoot.
“I’m trying to figure out what the guns were for,” he said.
To Bridges, the meaning of the monument is simple.
“To Black people, it means hatred, oppression, rape and murder,” he said. “So we want it gone. But we don’t want to take it down.”
Instead, he said, he wants a vote from the Harrison County Board of Supervisors to move it somewhere else.
Some who attended the demonstration to support the monument, like Larry Satchfield, said they could envision the statue being relocated to another publicly accessible spot.
“I don’t want it moved, but if it has to be moved, I wouldn’t mind it going to a park,” he said.
Others disagreed. One pro-monument demonstrator, who declined to give his name “for personal reasons,” said the monument was intended to be on public land, and should stay there.
“It’s a public monument,” he said. “Everybody can see it here. It’s about a visibility factor.”
A ‘more suitable location’
Despite the high-profile removals of Confederate statues across the country and votes on the issue across Mississippi this summer, the process remains almost entirely uncharted territory for local officials trying to figure out what to do with their monuments.
A 2004 Mississippi law saying war monuments can’t be moved unless a “more suitable location” is found adds a serious logistical hurdle to their removal.
At their meeting on July 6, the supervisors authorized board attorney Tim Holleman to research options for a new home for the controversial statue. So far, there have been no takers.
Though at least one county took a vote to move its monument before finding a “more suitable” location, Harrison County has interpreted the law to require identifying a new location before holding any vote on the monument.
“The Harrison County Board of Supervisors is still investigating the potential relocation of the monument at the Courthouse,” public information officer Jeff Clark said in a statement before the protest on Thursday. “Unfortunately, the Board Attorney advises that the statutes applicable to the monument limits the Board’s authority to act.”
Hulum said he would file a lawsuit Tuesday morning to demand the board hold a vote on the issue.
Between Beauvoir and a hard place
After that meeting in July, Supervisor Beverly Martin got in her car and drove over to Beauvoir, the last home of Jefferson Davis, to find out if they’d agree to house the statue.
The property contains a graveyard where hundreds of Confederate soldiers are buried. In 2017, the organization released a statement saying it would welcome Confederate statues taken down from pedestals in cities and counties around the South.
“That’d be perfect,” Martin had thought of Beauvoir during the meeting. “That’s where stuff like that should be.”
But when Beauvoir got back to her, Martin said, they told her they had decided they didn’t want the statue because it isn’t unique enough.
Timothy S. Sedore, author of “Mississippi Civil War Monuments: An Illustrated Field Guide,” wrote that the monument’s ‘”materials and style are stylistically unusual by Mississippi courthouse monument standards,” but that the “common soldier” figure depicted in the statue is a frequent character in monuments around the state.
Kitsaa Stevens, director of development and programs at Beauvoir, said the organization believes Confederate monuments have significance and meaning unique to the geographic communities that built them.
“Our first and foremost opinion is, all Confederate monuments should remain in the location that they were erected,” Stevens said.
In cases where monuments have already been removed and are sitting in storage, as in New Orleans, Stevens said, Beauvoir could be interested in accepting those. But the cost of transporting and re-erecting the monument is probably steep.
“It’s the bases [of the monuments] that are so expensive, and costly to remove, and heavy,” Stevens said. “You’re looking at, you’d have to have an architect come out there, a historian come out there. They’d have to measure it, estimate a weight. Then you’re looking at cranes, heavy equipment and trucks. The cost is just crazy.”
Barry White, director of the historic preservation division at the MDAH, said the department doesn’t yet have a good sense of how much it will typically cost to remove monuments and transport them to new resting places. In Mississippi at least, monument relocation is still too new. The department has only completed the legally required review process for one Confederate monument move, at the University of Mississippi, White said.
Besides Beauvoir, other potential locations have also declined to take the statue, Martin said.
‘You don’t have to wait’
In Lowndes County, the board of supervisors voted to move the statue to a city cemetery, which agreed to lease a small piece of land to the county so that the statue would remain on county property.
The Sun Herald contacted Pass Christian’s Live Oak Cemetery, where some Civil War veterans are buried, to ask if they would consider taking the statue. The answer was a firm no.
“We don’t want that type of controversy here,” a cemetery representative said.
When Bolivar County supervisors voted in July to move their Confederate monument, they didn’t know where they would end up putting it. After the vote, Supervisor Jacorius Liner told the Sun Herald that the county reached out to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, which must review any proposal to alter monuments in the state. The department recommended the county place the monument in Concordia Cemetery.
The monument should be moved from the front of the Cleveland courthouse to the cemetery within 90 days, Liner said. He thinks county boards of supervisors in Mississippi shouldn’t wait to find a new location for their monument before they take a vote.
“You don’t have to wait,” Liner said. “You can make the vote and then engage MDAH. There’s a myriad of avenues you can take to reach the same outcome. But the first step is, you need to just vote.”
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 9:00 PM.
