# data[].attributes.headline
Jaime Melgoza - The Statue of Jefferson Davis 

# data[].attributes.subject
Jaime Melgoza - The Statue of Jefferson Davis 

# data[].attributes.body
The Statue of Jefferson Davis was located in Frankfort, Kentucky. It was removed by the state capital due to the fact there were large protests in Louisville and Kentucky, over the death of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed Black woman that was shot eight times in her home. Additionally, in May 25 it was the killing of George Floyd where there were police demonstrations of brutality against Black Americans. This was the cause of the removal of this statue.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
FRANKFORT - The South has lost again.

Jefferson Davis and his legacy departed Kentucky's Capitol Rotunda after a 12-foot marble statue commemorating the lone president of the Confederate States of America was removed from its base Saturday morning.

Workers assembled a rig that lifted the 5-ton marble sculpture off the pedestal where it stood for 84 years - just a few feet behind the bronze statue of fellow Kentuckian Abraham Lincoln.

Gov. Andy Beshear, who joined workers in the Rotunda on Saturday, said the monument represented a divisive symbol in Kentucky.

"After calling for its removal and urging the Historic Properties Advisory Commission to act, today I pressed the button to bring it down," Beshear tweeted. "Now, every child who walks into their Capitol feels welcome. Today we took a step forward for the betterment of every single Kentuckian."

Davis, a Fairview native, was born June 3, 1808. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1828 before serving in the Mexican-American War. He later was a U.S. senator from Mississippi.

But he was also traitor to the country and an ardent racist who fiercely defended slavery and opposed civil rights for African Americans after the Confederacy was defeated.

"Today is a symbol we are moving ahead," state Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, told The Courier Journal on Saturday. "It's a recognition of the sins of our past."
Joe Gerth: Jefferson Davis represented what is wrong with our country
Nemes, a lawyer, brought his son to the Capitol to witness the statue's removal. He said he was shocked when he first saw the statue in the Rotunda during his bar association swearing-in ceremony years ago.

"We honor our history - the good and the bad - but in this room is what we want to celebrate," Nemes said. "And I think it's a wonderful thing that we don't want to celebrate Jeff Davis anymore."

Calls to remove Davis from the Rotunda, where thousands of tourists visit each year, have been made for years by Republican and Democratic leaders in the state.

But demands that the statue be removed intensified in recent weeks, as large protests in Louisville and throughout Kentucky developed over the death of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed Black woman shot eight times in her home by Louisville police officers.

Those demonstrations over police brutality against Black Americans proliferated around the country after the May 25 killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, with the movement adding the removal of Confederate monuments to its list of demands.

Protesters in Richmond, Virginia, this week toppled a Davis statue, which had stood along the city's Monument Avenue since 1907.
Related: Ben Chandler, whose grandfather put Davis in the Capitol, says it should go
Beshear, a Democrat, nudged the Historic Properties Advisory Commission to hold a special meeting, which it did Friday. The panel voted to remove the Davis statue by an 11-1 vote.

The approved motion also called for moving the statue to the Jefferson Davis Monument State Historic Site in Todd County, where the Confederate leader was born.

Davis was placed in the Rotunda at the urging of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1936.

Cathy Thomas, who was appointed to the historic properties panel by Beshear in January, argued for the removal of the Davis statue during Friday's meeting.

She said it was placed in the Rotunda during the Jim Crow era to reaffirm white supremacy, amid threats of lynchings and segregation that were prevalent at the time.

"He enslaved human beings, he rebelled against the United States of America," Thomas, who is Black, told the commission. "He is a symbol of the Confederacy that might still have me in chains."

Some on the panel, however, argued that the removal represented an effort to appease a "cultural movement" that would lead to purging other historical figures.
For subscribers: Why protests prompted a Black LMPD officer to hand in his badge
"I believe Gov. Beshear is politicizing this as a weapon, using our board as a weapon to get his agenda over," said Brandon Wilson, who was appointed to the commission by former Gov. Matt Bevin.

Wilson, the lone vote against removal, attempted a motion on Friday to remove all statues, including Lincoln, from the Capitol building. The effort was ruled out of order.

Jon Park, who was also appointed to the panel by Bevin, said he was casting a "reluctant" vote in favor of removal. He said how he was torn by the decision and didn't want to open a "Pandora's Box" that could lead to the removal of other statues.

Park, who works for Attorney General Daniel Cameron, said the former Confederacy president's entire life should not be forgotten.

"His early history, he was the things that were on that plaque that was removed by this commission - hero, statesman, patriot - he was those things," Park said. "He took a bad career choice. He did something he shouldn't have done."

But biographers and historians have long described the Fairview native, who operated a large cotton plantation in Mississippi where he owned as many as 113 slaves, as a fierce defender of keeping Black people in bondage for much of his life.

Davis was a champion of expanding slavery into other territories. As a U.S. senator in 1848, he proposed an amendment seeking to annex a part of Mexico where many southerners at the time wanted to expand slavery.

He also favored the U.S. seizing Cuba to "increase the number of slaveholding constituencies."
See also: From civil rights to BLM, Louisville's aging activists still protesting
Three years before the Civil War, he threatened secession if a Republican were elected president. And when Mississippi seceded from the Union in 1861, Davis resigned from the Senate in protest and delivered a farewell speech defending slavery.

"African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social and a political blessing," Davis once said.

Davis was eventually captured after the Civil War and was charged with treason, but he was later pardoned by President Andrew Johnson. He died in New Orleans in 1889.

Years after the war had ended he refused to take the oath of allegiance that many former Confederate soldiers and officials had made to regain their citizenship.

Davis' U.S. citizenship was restored posthumously by Congress in 1978.

A previous effort to remove the Davis statue - spurred by white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 - was rebuffed by the Historic Properties Advisory Commission in 2018, when it instead voted only to remove a plaque on it calling Davis a "war hero."

Bevin, as a candidate for governor in 2015, said he supported removing the marble sculpture, only to later oppose it as governor, saying it would be a "sanitization of history."
Check out: Murray State's Morant asks for removal of Confederate statue in Kentucky
The commission also voted 7-2 to keep the Davis statue in 2015, the same year that a poll showed 73% of Kentuckians favored keeping it in the Rotunda.

But there was bipartisan agreement to remove the statue in 2020 amid the national calls to sack Confederate monuments.

"He's gone, y'all," state Rep Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, who is Black, said in a tweet. "Glory, Hallelujah!

Louisville resident Terry Wilson, 40, held a large green neon sign outside the Governor's Mansion on Saturday saying, "Good job Andy."

At one point the governor stepped outside the mansion's second-floor balcony to wave back.

Wilson, who is Black, said it was hard as a child to understand why Kentucky had a statue honoring Davis.

"It had no place there," he said. "Is that a goal for someone to be a Confederate president? That's not a goal worth celebrating or for someone to walk into the Capitol and see."

Cameron, a Republican who is the state's first Black attorney general, released a statement applauding the decision to relocate the Jefferson Davis statue. "This decision reflects the current values (and) ideals of our commonwealth (and) signals to all who enter our capitol that we are committed to moving forward together."
In Louisville: Reach Phillip M. Bailey at pbailey@courier-journal.com or 502-582-4475. Follow him on Twitter at @phillipmbailey. How a technicality finally brought down the Castleman statue
State Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Taylor Mill, prefiled legislation that would have removed the Davis statue if the commission failed to act.

It also seeks to appropriate $500,000 to replace it with one of Carl Brashear, an African American Kentuckian depicted in the 2000 film "Men of Honor" who was a celebrated U.S. Navy master diver.

Beshear said earlier in the week that he wanted a "robust discussion" over what would replace the Davis statue, though he called Brashear "an amazing Kentuckian and obviously someone worthy of conversation about having their statue there."

Nemes, the Republican legislator, said he would like to see more diversity in the Rotunda, but that Kentuckians should take in the moment and revel in Saturday's removal.

"I'm very proud to be in the party of Lincoln," he said. "I think we faltered in our history and my party, and as a nation. But I'm very proud to be here looking at Lincoln standing alone, if you will, without Jeff Davis over his shoulder."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Sins of our past': After 84 years, Jefferson Davis statue removed from Kentucky Capitol

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
FRANKFORT - The South has lost again. Jefferson Davis and his legacy departed Kentucky's Capitol Rotunda after a 12-foot marble statue commemorating the lone president of the Confederate States of America was removed from its base Saturday morning.