Staff Photo by Tim Barber/Chattanooga Times Free Press – July 22, 2014 – The Joseph E. Johnston monument is a prominent C.S.A. structure facing Hamilton Street in downtown Dalton.Dalton residents and activists are calling for the removal or relocation of a statue of a Confederate general that has been downtown for more than a century, and the change has the support of several Dalton City Council members.
Hundreds of people marched Monday in Dalton as protests swept the nation and world following the death of George Floyd, an African American man killed under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
Rashun Mack is a Dalton native and the Northwest Georgia leader for a new activist organization called the Southern Advocacy Group. Mack organized Dalton’s first protest on June 1.
Mack said it was important for him to start the movement in his hometown because he knows there needs to be change.
“I’ve witnessed oppression in Whitfield County,” Mack said. “There is a racial problem here whether people want to admit it or not.”