"close the Sores of War": Why Georgia Needs New Legislation to Address Its Confederate Monuments
| Publication year | 2022 |
"Close the Sores of War": Why Georgia Needs New Legislation to Address Its Confederate Monuments
Abigail Coker
acoker4@student.gsu.edu
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Confederate monuments have been a point of contention in America for decades, but a series of events since 2015 have stoked the most recent movement calling for their removal. In 2015, Dylann Roof murdered Black churchgoers at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Because Roof was seemingly motivated and emboldened by Confederate ideology, many focused their attention on removing the more than 700 Confederate monuments throughout the country. Then, in August 2017, a large white nationalist rally assembled in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of
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a statue of Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville's Emancipation Park. The demonstrations turned violent when a white nationalist barreled his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring nineteen more. Finally, in May 2020, the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a White police officer catapulted the removal movement to a peak.
In response to these events, some states swiftly removed Confederate monuments from their public spaces, but in 2019, Georgia bolstered its monument-protection laws, tightening restrictions on local control by outright barring monument removal. This leaves localities—the ones who actually own much of the public property on which these monuments sit—without recourse. Several Georgia localities have nonetheless removed Confederate monuments from their grounds, but since these actions conflict directly with Georgia state law, they are vulnerable to litigation.
Monuments maintained in public spaces are means of expression that necessarily convey political narratives. Thus, by prohibiting monument removal, Georgia has prevented its localities from speaking their own narratives. Further, preemptively precluding monument removal undermines community engagement and erases any possibility of democratic consensus building.
To remedy this problem, this Note argues that Georgia should amend its monument-protection laws to return the power to local communities by affording them myriad options—including contextualization, removal, and destruction—to address their Confederate monuments. This Note proposes that Georgia adopt a monument-protection statute similar to Virginia's monument-protection statute that provides a democratic forum for discussion and ultimately allows localities to manage their own public spaces.
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Abstract................................................................................629
Introduction.........................................................................632
I. Background......................................................................639
A. Confederate Symbolism.............................................639
1. Memorial Representations...................................640B. Overview of Historic Preservation Law .................... 644
2. Monument Representations .................................. 641
C. Georgia's Monument-Protection Laws.....................646
1. The Current Law: The 2019 Monument Protection Act.........................................................................647D. Georgia's Response to Calls for Removal: Three Case Studies ........................................................................ 650
2. 2020 Proposed Amendment..................................649
III. Analysis..........................................................................652
A. Support for and Opposition to Monument Removal .. 652
1. Support for Monument Removal...........................653B. Deficiencies in the 2019 Monument Protection Act .. 657
2. Opposition to Monument Removal ....................... 655
1. Lack of Democratic Options.................................658C. Deficiencies in the 2020 Proposed Amendments.......664
2. Vulnerable to Litigation.......................................660
III. Proposal.........................................................................664
A. A New Monument Protection Act for Georgia: Building from Virginia's Model ................................................ 665
B. Justifications for Each Option ................................... 667
1. Contextualization..................................................668
2. Removal and Relocation....................................... 669
3. Destruction...........................................................670
Conclusion............................................................................671
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As midnight approached on the eve of Juneteenth 2020, a crowd gathered in Georgia's Decatur Square to watch the dismantling of a 112-year-old Confederate monument.2 Applause erupted as a crane plucked the thirty-foot obelisk from its pedestal outside the historic DeKalb County courthouse.3 The removal was three years in the making: in September 2017, Decatur's City Commission voted unanimously to remove the monument.4 Yet the Commission's vote was moot in the face of Georgia law, which then, and now, prohibits monument removal.5 Thus, until a 2020 court order authorized the removal for public safety, the City was powerless to do more than contextualize the monument that sat on its grounds, exposing a glaring hole in Georgia state law.6
What governments maintain in their public spaces bears directly on their communities.7 Public space is a precious and limited commodity managed by those in political power.8 Thus, the organization of public space necessarily conveys a political narrative.9 That narrative is communicated most clearly through expressive markers like
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monuments10 but may just as well be conveyed through structural mechanisms not considered in this Note.11 Because monuments are "a means of expression," political narrative building includes deciding which monuments, particularly those placed by previous regimes, deserve to occupy public spaces.12
Although Confederate monuments have remained a point of contention in America for decades, a series of events since 2015 have stoked the most recent movement calling for their removal. First, in June 2015, white supremacist Dylann Roof massacred nine Black churchgoers at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in hopes of igniting a race war.13 Pictures of Roof posing with the Confederate battle flag quickly surfaced, including information that he made a pilgrimage to several Confederate heritage
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sites in preparation for the shooting.14 Because Roof revered and was seemingly emboldened and motivated by Confederate ideology, many turned their attention to removing the Confederate flag and Confederate monuments from public spaces.15
Following the Charleston shooting, South Carolina swiftly removed the Confederate battle flag from its statehouse grounds, and a number of Confederate monuments around the country were relocated, including ones in Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, and Kentucky.16 At the same time, however, some states bolstered restrictions on monument removal.17
Then, in August 2017, a large white nationalist rally titled "Unite the Right" assembled in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the
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removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville's Emancipation Park.18 The demonstrations turned violent when a white nationalist barreled his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring nineteen more.19 Seeds of political dissent were sown, foreshadowing a sea change in the 2020 presidential election, when then-President Trump offered a weak rebuke of the white nationalist crowd by comparing them to their counterprotesters, implicitly recognizing their perspective as equally valid.20 After the Charlottesville rallies, dozens of Confederate monuments were removed from public spaces.21 By contrast, Georgia reacted to the Charleston massacre by broadening the scope of its monument-protection laws.22
Finally, in May 2020, the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police catapulted the movement to a peak.23 The police arrested Floyd,
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a Black man, after he allegedly used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill at a convenience store in Minneapolis.24 Floyd was handcuffed but resisted entering a squad car after telling police he was claustrophobic.25 As the effort to put Floyd in the police car continued, Floyd eventually hit the ground—it is unclear whether he fell or was pushed by police—and officers immediately restrained him.26 Officer Derek Chauvin, a White man, knelt on Floyd's neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, ignoring Floyd's repeated cries that he could not breathe, until Floyd lost consciousness.27 Chauvin continued kneeling on Floyd's neck even after Floyd became unresponsive, and his pulse was no longer detectable.28 Floyd was declared dead shortly later at a hospital, and nationwide protests ensued in the subsequent weeks.29
Protests over the killings of unarmed Black people are not new; in fact, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and corresponding demonstrations started in 2013 after George Zimmerman, a White man, was acquitted for the murder of a Black teen, Trayvon Martin.30 Nevertheless, the BLM protests that erupted in the wake of George Floyd's murder reached unprecedented levels.31 Data suggests that
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fifteen to twenty-six million people participated in the protests.32 Some protestors directed their anger at Confederate monuments, vandalizing monuments in Virginia, Alabama, and Georgia.33
Political...
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