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C- 8/24/17
R- Relevant, agrees to keep the statues standing
A- Fox Business
A- No mistakes
P- Informs us of the different points of view for the people who are fine by seeing the statues

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Why Democrats want to remove confederate monuments

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C- 4/10/19
R- Relevant, agrees with getting rid of the statues
A- Alex Samuels
A- No mistakes
P-  Informs us the action people have taken to get rid of the statues

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Tensions from an ongoing statewide debate about whether Confederate monuments should be preserved or taken down boiled over at the state Capitol on Tuesday during discussion of a bill that would expand protections of historical monuments - and even change existing law that singles out Confederate markers for protection.

At one point during the often heated debate on Republican state Rep. James White's House Bill 583, another lawmaker took people testifying in support of the bill to task. State Rep. Jarvis Johnson took issue with arguments that tearing the markers down amounts to erasing history. Johnson said Confederate monuments are particularly harmful to people of color.

"Because you guys want to continue to talk about history, should we erect a statue that demonstrated how slaves were disciplined?" asked Johnson, a Houston Democrat. "We want to teach, so should we erect a statue with slaves hanging from a tree? Should we erect a monument that demonstrates Indians being mutilated and run out of their land?

"No, we're not going to celebrate that. That's vile."

The bill from White of Hillister would allow whichever government has jurisdiction to alter any monuments - if they are less than 20 years old. City or county monuments that have been up between 20 and 40 years could only be altered, relocated or destroyed if voters approve. Changes to state monument that have been up between 20 and 40 years would require a majority vote of the Legislature. And monuments erected more than 40 years ago couldn't be altered, moved, relocated, renamed or destroyed, the lawmaker said.

Several Confederate monuments in the state are more than 40 years old. But before the hearing, White told The Texas Tribune that his bill was simply about "getting some order moving forward."

"It's not just Confederate statues that would be caught up in this," he said. "This could also help out on gentrification. You go into these historical old Hispanic or black communities undergoing transition through gentrification, and they may have plaques or monuments and buildings of yesteryear they want to keep up, so this could possibly help them, too."

Tuesday's debate came months after a state board that oversees the Texas Capitol grounds voted unanimously to remove a controversial Confederate plaque that falsely asserted the Civil War was "not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery." It also came on the heels of efforts by a conservative nonprofit known as the Conservative Response Team to press state leaders to move legislation - including White's - protecting Confederate monuments while cities across the state grapple with whether to take such markers down.

The group recently unveiled a half-minute online ad urging viewers to call House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, and another tells them to contact Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

More than a dozen people who came to testify on White's bill did so in favor of the legislation. And while White's bill is not meant to solely apply to Confederate monuments, many who spoke Tuesday did so hoping to protect such landmarks.

Daniel Miller with the Texas Nationalist Movement, which says its mission is to secure and protect the political, cultural and economic independence of the nation of Texas, said that his godmother was a Holocaust survivor and, because of her, he learned how to say in German the phrase, "I will not forget."

"Imagine what would happen if some politician decided they wanted to contextualize the history of World War II and the Holocaust and their solution was to tear down Auschwitz? I can't fathom what the outrage would be," he said. "But somehow, someway, we find folks out there who believe there are parts of our history that are so objectionable that we have to tear down monuments as if somehow forgetting these things is the most important thing."

After Tuesday's hearing, Johnson told the Tribune he took issue with many claims made by the people who testified in favor of White's bill. His most fervent rebuttal, however, came in response to testimony from former Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who said White's bill "was about more than Confederate monuments" but "a slippery slope that begins with Confederate monuments."

During his testimony, Patterson said, "Everything is in jeopardy in the future." To further his point, the former commissioner questioned whether there would would be backlash to a monument erected for the Buffalo Soldiers, cavalry units composed of African American soldiers after the Civil War, since they "participated in a genocidal war against an entire race of people, the American Plains Indians, and put them on reservations, in effect, as slaves."

"No one is without sin," Patterson said. "No ethnic group is without some black marks in their past."

That and other comments drew ire from Johnson.

"I'm not going to let you guys play this game about eradicating history," Johnson said. "We're not eradicating history. ... But we don't need to celebrate certain people who had my ancestors in bondage."

Others opposing White's measure came bearing a similar impassioned tone.

"People have got to stop repeating this idiotic slogan about how these monuments are history," said Bryan Register with the group De-Confederate Austin. "They are not history. ... If you honor someone for doing something, you are saying it was good."

After more than an hour of testimony, White's bill was left pending before the committee.

"I don't know what's going to happen to this bill," White said. "A lot of bills die and this one may likely die, but I just hope one day that we can all respect everything that happened in this country and learn from all of it and stop all this national navel gazing."

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Texas legislation aimed at protecting monuments of all kinds sparks heated debate over Confederate markers

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Tensions from an ongoing statewide debate about whether Confederate monuments should be preserved or taken down boiled over at the state Capitol on Tuesday during discussion of a bill that would expand protections of historical monuments - and even change existing law that singles out Confederate markers for protection.

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C- 8/3/15
R- Relevant, picture of John Hunt Morgan statue
A- Could not find
A- Picture
P- Shows us one of the many statues

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C- 8/22/17
R- Relevant, agrees to take the statues down
A- Fox Business
A- No mistakes
P- Informs us of the different points of view for the people who are affended by the statues

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Should Confederate monuments be taken down?

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C- 3/11/18
R-  Relevant, agrees with getting rid of the statues
A- Wynton Marsalis
A- Makes an unclear statement during a phrase
P- Informs us on the beliefs of the people

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Behind the decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee

Last May, a crane removed a 16½ foot-tall bronze statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from its perch 60 feet above New Orleans. The statue was one of four Confederate monuments the city's mayor, Mitch Landrieu, had removed last year.

"In a city that I represent that's 67 percent African American, to have a young African-American girl pass by that statue and look at it every day, I ask myself, 'Am I really preparing her for a really good future? Is she feeling like she's getting lifted up by the government, or is she being put down?'" Landrieu tells Anderson Cooper this week on 60 Minutes. "I mean, I think the answer's pretty clear."

On the broadcast this week, Cooper reports on the debate throughout the South to remove Confederate monuments, including the two that were at the center of the violence that broke out in Charlottesville last August.

Landrieu told Cooper that his decision to remove the Lee monument began with a conversation with an old friend, renowned jazz musician and New Orleans native Wynton Marsalis. Among other subjects, the two had been talking about plans for New Orleans ahead of the city's 300th anniversary, which will occur this year.

"It was absolutely Wynton who said to me, 'I really want you to think about taking that thing down,'" Landrieu says in the video above.

In an interview with 60 Minutes Overtime's Ann Silvio, Marsalis says the statue - which stood prominently in a traffic circle called "Lee Circle" - was a " definitive marker" in New Orleans. The statue featured Lee, arms crossed, in his Civil War regalia, and it faced north "as an affront to the Union," Landrieu says.

The monument was also an insult to Marsalis' uncle, who grew up on a plantation. Marsalis lived with him for a year when he was 6 years old.

"The only reason I noticed the statue was my great-uncle, who was born in 1883, always talked about that statue," Marsalis says. "He'd point it out every time. He hated that statue."

"It made my great-uncle feel bad," Marsalis says. "So because it made him feel bad, I was aware of it."

Today, Lee's statue sits in a hastily built plywood shed, along with the other three Confederate statues that were removed from New Orleans. Landrieu asked that 60 Minutes not reveal the location.

On the broadcast, the mayor tells Cooper the monuments were a "lie."

"In the sense that Robert E. Lee was used as an example to send a message to the rest of the country, and to all the people that lived here, that the Confederacy was a noble cause," Landrieu says. "And that's just not true."

Beyond the Confederacy's racially charged defense of slavery, Marsalis emphasizes that Lee led the Confederate forces against the United States - and they lost.

"Where in the world are you going to find a losing general with a statue in a major city of the country that won?" Marsalis asks. "No. Go look around. You tell me, when you find that statue, take a picture of it and show me."

After Landrieu removed the monuments in New Orleans, other cities saw the removal of their own Confederate monuments, including Baltimore, Austin, and Durham, North Carolina. Landrieu wrote a book on his decision to remove the monuments titled In the Shadow of Statues, which we be released later this month.

The video above was produced by Ann Silvio, Will Croxton, and Lisa Orlando. It was edited by Will Croxton and Lisa Orlando.

Source: CBS News

Posted on March 11th, 2018 in Profiles & Interviews | Tags: 60 minutes, cbs, new orleans

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Behind the decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee

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Last May, a crane removed a 16½ foot-tall bronze statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from its perch 60 feet above New Orleans. The statue was one of four Confederate monuments the city's mayor, Mitch Landrieu, had removed last year.

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C-  8/15/17
R-  Relevant, agrees with not getting rid of the statues
A- Countable
A- No mistakes
P- Informs us of the acts people are  procceeding in

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C- 2017
R- Relevant,  agrees to get rid of statues
A- John R. Vile
A- No mistakes
P-  Informs us of the past statues taken down

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A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is removed from the University of Texas campus, early Monday morning, Aug. 21, 2017, in Austin, Texas. University of Texas President Greg Fenves ordered the immediate removal of statues of Robert E. Lee and other prominent Confederate figures from a main area of campus, saying such monuments have become "symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism." (AP Photo/Eric Gay, used with permission from The Associated Press)

Civilizations build monuments to honor leaders and heroes.They may celebrate local or national heroes, or seek to bind an empire (as do the many statues throughout the British Commonwealth to Queen Victoria).

Monuments have occasionally been destroyed due to public sentiment

On occasion, popular sentiments will result in the destruction of monuments, as when the statue of King George III was destroyed after the Declaration of Independence was read in New York City.This is hardly an American phenomenon. Russians destroyed many statues of Lenin and Stalin after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and Iraqis destroyed statues of Saddam Hussein after American troops captured Baghdad.

One complexity is that statues clearly commemorate the values of the time and place where they were constructed and thus might illumine the history of such periods.Moreover, individuals may react differently to statues depending on their region, their race, or their historical understandings.

Critics note the difference between monuments to Founding Fathers and Confederate leaders

In a 2017 press conference in which he defended Confederate monuments, President Donald Trump observed that early presidents, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were slaveholders, and yet most people do not think that their statues should be dismantled.

Critics noted that such men (in contrast to Confederate leaders and generals) had worked to establish, rather than to destroy the nation.They might further note that the historic sites of the homes of such presidents are increasingly weaving the stories of their slaves into the narratives of their lives.

Some see Confederate statues as honoring past; others as an affront to freedom

Hundreds of southern towns, which have long renounced the institution of slavery, have generic representations of Confederate soldiers in town parks on town squares.For many, they recognize the heroic sacrifice of ancestors for what they believed, which may have included anything from a desire to defend their homes, to a defense of states' rights, and issues other than the perpetuation of slavery. Some may celebrate idealized versions of Confederate leaders who never actually existed or may recognize such leaders (General Robert E. Lee, for example) for attempting to heal the nation after the Civil War ended.

Many of these statues to Confederate leaders were erected from 1890 to 1925, a time which marked the birth of Jim Crow segregation laws throughout the South, the suppression of black voting,and the rise of increased violence against blacks.African-Americans who approached such statues on public property, especially in front of courthouses, may well have questioned whether they could expect the "equal protection of the laws" promised by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.Similarly, African-American children attending a school named after a Confederate General, or a mascot designated as a rebel, might well wonder whether they will be equally accepted as white students.

Individuals are free under the First Amendment to construct Confederate memorials on private property. There is a large statue to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Nashville, Tennessee. Forrest, a Tennessean who was generally regarded as a great tactician, also was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. While the private monument remains, there is renewed debate about whether a bust of General Forrest in the State Capitol Building (public property) should be retained. Under the government speech doctrine, the government can display or not display certain monuments. However, the government may have to follow certain legally specified procedures before it can remove monuments. In this photo, the statue of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest is put up along Interstate 65 in Nashville, Tenn., in 1998. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, used with permission from the Associated Press)

Government entities grapple with Confederate monuments on public property

Individuals are, of course, free under the First Amendment to construct memorials on private property.

There is a large statue to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Nashville, Tennessee.Forrest, a Tennessean who was generally regarded as a great tactician, also was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.While the private monument remains, there is renewed debate about whether a bust of General Forrest in the State Capitol Building (public property) should be retained. Under the government speech doctrine, the government can display or not display certain monuments. However, the government may have to follow certain legally specified procedures before it can remove monuments.

Protests surrounding statues turn dangerous

The issue came to a head in August 2017 when the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, home to the University of Virginia, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson, decided to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee from a public park.This decision led to a Friday night torch-light parade through the grounds of the University of Virginia by Neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right, who while ostensibly there to protest the statue's removal (and who had a First Amendment right to protest), chanted Nazi and anti-Semitic slogans.

The next day, demonstrators and counter-protestors confronted one another in downtown Charlottesville, and one of the demonstrators, who appears to have Nazi sympathies, plowed his car through a group of counter-demonstrators resulting in the death of Heather Heyer.

President Donald Trump subsequently held a press conference in which he appeared to be criticizing all sides equally (Shear and Haberman, 2017).This sparked further outrage and charges that he was morally equating those who had been violent and those who were not.Protestors subsequently demolished a Confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina, and the mayor of Baltimore, Maryland ordered the removal of a number of Confederate memorials in the city.

Other proposed solutions have included simply leaving the statues as monuments to history, moving them to parks or museums where they can be placed in historical context, or adding disclaimers or other monuments (to, for example, former slaves) that would provide a wider context.

The case of Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans (2015) established that a state does not have to make its license plates a forum for the display of Confederate flags, but it did not mandate that they prevent it under the government speech doctrine. For now, at least, most such decisions are likely to be made at the state or local level. In this Wednesday, April 18, 2001 file photo, a Confederate supporter who identified himself as "Bonzo" of Enterprise, Ala., pays homage to the statue of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis at the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, used with permission from the Associated Press)

Government speech doctrine grants free speech rights to government

The case of Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans (2015) established that a state does not have to make its license plates a forum for the display of Confederate flags, but it did not mandate that they prevent it under the government speech doctrine.For now, at least, most such decisions are likely to be made at the state or local level.

Christopher Ingraham reports that Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol (where each state has designated two monuments) contains 12 statues of Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, and only four of African-Americans.

John Vile is professor of political science and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University. He is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the First Amendment. This article was originally published in 2017.

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A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is removed from the University of Texas campus, early Monday morning, Aug. 21, 2017, in Austin, Texas. University of Texas President Greg Fenves ordered the immediate removal of statues of Robert E.

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C- 1/8/20
R- Relevant, agrees to get rid of statues
A- Brett Barrouquere
A- No mistakes
P- Informs us of the more political peoples opinions

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Monuments to the "Lost Cause" in San Antonio and at the University of Texas at Austin can stay down after a ruling by the U.S. 5 th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A three-judge panel ruled on Jan. 3 that the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and three individuals couldn't show their rights were violated or that they were personally harmed by the removal of the monuments.

"Their passion, however sincere, does not place them among the injured," Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote, joined by fellow judges Jennifer Walker Elrod and Stuart Kyle Duncan.

The decision upheld two separate rulings by federal court judges in Texas. In both, the judges found that the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the members of the organization who sued lacked the legal standing to claim the removal of the statues violated their First Amendment rights.

Sons of Confederate Veterans Texas Division spokesman Shelby Little and white supremacist attorney Kirk David Lyons, who filed the initial lawsuits, did not return email messages seeking comment.

The University of Texas case centered on statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Generals Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston, and John H. Reagan, the postmaster general of the Confederate States of America. Also included was President Woodrow Wilson, a descendant of Confederate soldiers with a famously racist presidential legacy, including hosting a whites-only screening of "The Birth of a Nation" at the White House and expanding segregation in federal agencies.

The monuments were erected with funds donated in the early 1900s by George Littlefield, a major in the Confederate Army.

University of Texas President Greg Fenves ordered the statues of Wilson and Davis moved from the main hall at the university in 2015 after Dylann Roof shot and killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The other statues were removed two years later after the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Since Roof's attack on the church, at least 138 statues and symbols to the Confederacy have been removed from public spaces.

The appeals court ruling is the latest in a series of decisions upholding the decision to take down or move monuments in such places as New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; and Dallas.

A university commission recommended moving the memorials to UT's Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, where they were put on display for further study in the context of the Civil War.

"Erected during the period of Jim Crow laws and segregation, the statues represent the subjugation of African Americans. That remains true today for white supremacists who use them to symbolize hatred and bigotry," Fenves said in a statement announcing the relocation of the statues in 2017.

The San Antonio ruling stems from a decision by the city to move a Confederate monument from a city park in the early morning hours of Aug. 31, 2017, just weeks after Unite the Right.

The city also removed two memorial cannons from the park.

The statue was similar to hundreds of others across the country, featuring a Confederate soldier with his right arm outstretched toward the sky and his index finger pointing upward.
Photo by Bob Daemmrich/Alamy Photo

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Confederate Monuments in Texas Can Stay Down, Court Rules

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Monuments to the "Lost Cause" in San Antonio and at the University of Texas at Austin can stay down after a ruling by the U.S. 5 th Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel ruled on Jan.