Will Confederate monument be moved in Macon? County leaders to review resolution

Updated July 7, 8:30 p.m.

A resolution that would relocate the Confederate monument from the corner of Second Street and Cotton Avenue has been referred to a county committee.

The resolution, sponsored by Commissioner Virgil Watkins, would require the statue of an anonymous Civil War soldier to be moved to Whittle Park so construction can take place in Cotton Avenue Plaza, according to the resolution. Whittle Park is on Riverside Drive, outside of Rose Hill Cemetery.

“The more I learn about the history of the Confederate statue in that location… the less I’m interested — and I think the general public is interested — in having something like that in the center of our downtown,” Watkins told the Telegraph. “It is not a useful space. With a little bit of improvement, we can plan to do better, and we’ll move the statue to a place that may be more relevant.”

Tuesday, Mayor Robert Reichert referred the matter to the Macon-Bibb County Commission’s Committee of the Whole.

The project at Cotton Avenue Plaza would be a continuation of the Urban Development Authority’s 2015 Macon Action Plan, which helped revitalize Macon’s urban core, including completing the Second Street Vision Block.

To develop the plaza, the intersection of Second Street and Cotton Avenue will need to be realigned, and the land on which the statue sits will need to be used. The resolution also says moving the statue will help prevent further vandalism to it.

“I think of it as a symbol of oppression, a symbol of treason,” Watkins said. “I think it is a maintaining of the status quo. Ultimately, I think that’s what it symbolizes, an agreement to maintain the status quo, which seems to have no problem oppressing people.”

The resolution authorizes the mayor to move the statue within 30 days, or as soon as it’s practical. If additional time is needed to prepare a permanent site at Whittle Park, the monument should be moved to a temporary storage space for its protection and preservation, according to the resolution.

A resident’s GoFundMe campaign to have the statue removed has raised more than $7,000. The goal is to raise $8,000.

Why hasn’t the statue been moved?

Georgia has laws that restrict cities and counties from removing monuments, which has prevented the Confederate monument in Macon from being moved in the past.

The resolution cites these laws, and Watkins said he believes the resolution is a perfect application of the law.

The law says no publicly owned monument on public property can be “relocated, removed, concealed, obscured, or altered in any fashion by any officer or agency.”

However, the law allows monuments to be relocated under certain circumstances, such as the construction of roads or streets. But the monument must be relocated to “a site of similar prominence, honor, visibility and access within the same county or municipality in which the monument was originally located.”

This law also prohibits the statues from being moved to a museum, cemetery or mausoleum, unless they already were located there.

Statue has moved before

The statue, constructed in the late 1870s, stood at the intersection of Second and Mulberry Streets before being moved to the intersection at Cotton Avenue in the mid-1950s to improve traffic flow near the Bibb County Courthouse, according to Telegraph archives.

Civil War-era artifacts were found in a box in the base of the statue when it was relocated, including a letter from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Confederate bonds, old newspapers, coins and pictures.

After making copies of the contents inside the box, it was put back into the base of a statue with a photocopy of an additional letter from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

A step forward

Moving the statue will be a strong visualization to the community of a step toward equity, Watkins said.

“If we’re going to say Black Lives Matter... we got to work on equity issues,” Watkins said.

Watkins sponsored another resolution on Tuesday’s meeting agenda to begin the process to find a company to administer an equity assessment on Macon-Bibb County public services.

“We want to move on and start talking about how to actually achieve equity and inclusion in our society for all people, and those types of symbols are things you can’t have if you want everyone to feel like they’re fully included in your community,” he said.

This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 4:12 PM.