TUSKEGEE, Ala. (AP) – Officials in a majority-black county said Friday that they hope to permanently remove a now-covered Confederate memorial erected more than a century ago in the town square.
Macon County Commission Chairman Louis Maxwell said at a news conference that officials are researching ways to move the statue that sits in the town square of Tuskegee. Crews covered up the base of the statue after it was vandalized with anti-Ku Klux Klan graffiti last week.
“The end objective is to have the statue relocated,” Maxwell said. “We don’t have a problem with preserving it. I don’t want it destroyed. If somebody wants it, we’ll give it to them.”
Maxwell acknowledged that there will be a cost involved. A 2017 state law prohibits the removal of Confederate and other longstanding monuments. The mayor of Birmingham has said the potential $25,000 state fine for removing a Confederate monument was worth the cost.
In the weeks since George Floyd’s death set off protests across the U.S., many Confederate monuments have been damaged or taken down. Some were toppled by demonstrators and others removed by local authorities. Floyd died in Minneapolis last month after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air.