CLINTON, La. (AP) – The statue of the anonymous Confederate soldier has stood in front of the white-columned East Feliciana Parish courthouse for more than a century, leaning on his rifle as he looks down on trucks hauling timber and residents visiting the bank across the street.
It withstood an attempt to remove it in 2016. The local doctor who asked the southeast Louisiana parish to move it lost two friends in the controversy, but the statue stayed. In 2018, a Black man who was a defendant in a trial petitioned to have his case moved, saying the statue was a symbol of racism. He lost that fight, and the statue stood.
Now, as protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis focus attention on the hundreds of Confederate statues still standing across the Southern landscape, officials in the rural parish of roughly 20,000 people have voted 5-3 to leave the statue where it is.
In recent weeks, dozens of Confederate statues have fallen across the country – often in more liberal-leaning urban centers. But in many smaller places like Clinton, the effort to remove markers that many view as racist relics has stalled or has yet to arrive.
John Sanders, a Black businessman and minister in Clinton, wants the statue removed and thought the national spotlight on the issue presented a slight chance that parish officials would vote to move it. But if not now, he thinks it will happen – some day.