Committee to consider proposed move of Macon Confederate soldier statue

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 resolution will be brought before the Committee of the Whole on July 14. All committee meetings are held on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month starting at 9 a.m. and followed by a work session at 1 p.m. The meetings are streamed live to Macon-Bibb County’s Facebook page.

If the resolution passes in committee, it will be moved to the commission meeting agenda for July 21 at 6 p.m. People can submit public comments to the Clerk’s Office at commission@maconbibb.us before noon July 21 if the meetings are still being held over Zoom.

During the July 7 meeting, several public comments were mentioned disagreeing with the resolution, but they were summarized instead of read individually due to the excessive amount of comments submitted. This practice is similar to how public comments would be taken during an in-person meeting. If a group of people wanted to make comments during an in-person meeting, they would be asked to pick one person to summarize their viewpoints instead of having everyone speak for five minutes each.

What are the details of the resolution?

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.

The mayor would also be authorized to use outside funding from any legal private source to remove the statue as well as any funds the commission approves for the project.

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.” according to O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1(b)(3).

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.” according to O.C.G.A. § 50-3-1(b)(7).

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

The statue has been moved before in the mid-1950’s from its location at the intersection of Second and Mulberry Streets to improve traffic flow near the Bibb County Courthouse.

Moving 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. The resolution was passed unanimously.

“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.