JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – A Confederate monument that’s been a divisive symbol at the University of Mississippi was being removed Tuesday from a prominent spot on the Oxford campus.
It will be taken to a Civil War cemetery in a secluded part of campus. Students and faculty who pushed the university for years to move the statue have criticized administrators’ draft plan for the new site, which includes a lighted pathway to where the figure will stand and the possible addition of headstones over what, for decades, have been unmarked graves. Changes are to be paid by private donors.
“It’s not going to create a shrine to the Confederacy,” University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce told The Associated Press on June 24 at the state Capitol. “People will have to judge that when they see the end product.”
The University of Mississippi was founded in 1848, and the marble statue of a saluting Confederate soldier was put up in 1906. It is one of many Confederate monuments erected across the South more than a century ago.
Critics say its display near the university’s main administrative building sends a signal that Ole Miss glorifies the Confederacy and glosses over the South’s history of slavery.