NATCHEZ, Miss. – The city Board of Aldermen is considering a request to remove the Natchez Confederate monument at Memorial Park placed there in 1890.
This comes a week after Mayor Dan Gibson unveiled plans to erect another monument at the Main Street park to honor black Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War.
Gibson is not calling for taking down the statue that memorializes Confederate soldiers from Natchez-Adams County killed during the war, but Alderman Billie Joe Frazier said it should be. The men it honors “were traitorous to the Union,” Frazier said.
He wanted Tuesday to get the board to vote for removing the 131-year-old monument from the city park. Aldermen instead voted to further review a request by Frazier and Natchez resident Lee Ford.
“That statue downtown represents oppression and intimidation, and it needs to come down,” Ford told the board and mayor during their Tuesday meeting.
The tall, stone monument — topped by a standing soldier with a rifle pointed down in a surrendering pose — was placed there in 1890 “in Memory of the Confederate Dead from Natchez and Adams County” by the local Confederate Memorial Association, according to inscriptions on the statue’s base.
“From each Lost Cause of Earth, something precious springs to birth, though lost it be to men, it lives with God again,” reads the monument engraving.
Voting Tuesday to put off a final decision on the Confederate memorial’s fate were Aldermen Valencia Hall, Sarah Carter Smith, Felicia Irving and Dan Dillard. Frazier voted against this, wanting instead to rid the monument from Memorial Park. Alderman Ben Davis was absent and did not vote.
In announcing plans last week to erect a monument paying homage to black Union soldiers, the mayor said: “Now is a time for building up, not tearing down. This monument will be a significant step forward for all of us.”
Gibson is forming a committee chaired by black community activist Robert Pernell for advancing the monument honoring the U.S. Colored Troops, who were mostly freed slaves enlisted in the Union army during the Civil War. About 3,000 USCT soldiers were posted in Natchez during the Union occupation of Natchez beginning in 1863, according to historical accounts.
Irving said she agrees with Frazier about the Confederate monument, but a consensus is needed by the city’s four black aldermen and two white board members with historic preservationists’ help on what to do with it. “It involves all of us to make the change…. It’s about uniting people and uniting the community,” she said.
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