The City of Charleston quietly removed part of a Confederate memorial Monday, joining other cities and states across the country who are taking a closer look at structures honoring Confederate soldiers and generals.
Riflemen Memorial still stands at Ruffner Park in downtown Charleston, but a bronze plaque that covers most of its face is now gone.
That plaque listed the names of local men who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Among the names is William Armstead, who is described on the plaque as a “colored cook, faithful during the war.” That reference is one of the reasons the city removed the face of the monument, said Mayor Amy Goodwin.
“It perpetuates the falsehoods that slaves enjoyed being slaves and preferred not to be free,” Goodwin said. “It’s offensive. It needed to be removed. And we removed it.”
Goodwin said the city will put a new plaque in its place, describing the history of Ruffner Park.
The Riflemen Memorial was built in 1922 by the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who then donated it to the City of Charleston. The UDC organization, based in Richmond, Virginia, did not return a request for comment.
Update 6/30/20 1:42 p.m.
Opponents of the mayor’s decision to remove the monument’s plaque spoke out on social media, including Ernest Blevins, commander of the Robert S. Camp Sons of the Confederate Veterans in Charleston, West Virginia.
Blevins said he first heard the plaque had been removed when a friend saw a post about it on Facebook. “They [the city] just removed it without public comment. It was secretive,” he said. Blevins added that he doesn’t think that the memorial was meant to be racist or offensive.
Toddlers yelling, running around the hardwood floors and leaving cracker crumbs on the ground. A laptop screen dented by a soup can dropped by a kid. At one point, a room covered from ceiling to floor with hand prints after kids were left alone with a paint can.
But for the moment, Sherman Neal’s kids — two-year-old Skyler and three-year-old Jett — are on the leather couch, fixated on another “Max & Ruby” cartoon.
“This is a warm up one before jumping off the couch,” Neal said with a hint of apprehension and a smile.“There’s no running right now. It’s pretty calm.”
“Usually what we’re doing is cleaning up messes half of the day,” Neal’s wife, Rikki, added from across the living room. “We’ve had some more light bulbs — they see a light bulb, and they’ll throw it.”
Yet despite the moments of chaos, this is family time 31-year-old Neal, who shares a name with Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, has truly never had until now. For years, he was away from his wife and kids pursuing a career and serving his country as a U.S. Marine, commanding a platoon on a California base and in the Middle East coordinating supplies for Marines in several countries.
He wasn’t there in person when his wife went into labor with their daughter Skyler, having just arrived in Kuwait for his second deployment. He heard his daughter for the first time through a Skype call, but he didn’t get to be with her during her first seven months of life. He hadn’t lived with his wife since they got married in 2015 until recently.
Their Murray, Kentucky, home they purchased last year is where, in many ways, his life is just beginning.
“Why would I be sitting in the desert in California by myself in 120 degrees, but I could just quit,” Neal said. “But I was doing it because these guys I’m talking about working with, I owe them that. Now I owe them that, I owe my kids that, I owe my family that.”
Credit Liam Niemeyer/ Ohio Valley ReSource
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Sherman Neal, with the Murray State University football team.
Neal had declined to pursue a further career in the armed forces after five years of active duty, instead chasing a dream of coaching football. That dream started by sending dozens of letters and emails to coaches across the country, eventually networking into volunteer coaching opportunities.
Murray State University took a chance on him for his first real coaching job as an offensive and special teams analyst. So Murray — population 19,327 — ended up being his family’s new home. But before he took the job, he did a little internet research on the town.
The first thing he saw was a picture of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Specifically, a statue of Lee, installed in 1917 on Calloway County courthouse grounds and funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
On June 1, Neal spoke about his family and his children in an open letter to Murray and Calloway County leadership that subsequently embroiled the quiet college town in protests and calls for action. His target: that statue.
Credit Liam Niemeyer/ Ohio Valley ReSource
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Signs were placed on the Confederate monument on county courthouse grounds, advocating for the removal of the monument.
“When my 3-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter ask, ‘who’s that man and why is he up there?’ I will inform them that the city worked in conjunction with the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan by proxy, to place him up there with the intent to keep Black people quiet and subservient,” Neal said in the letter. “I will then tell him that we will not be intimidated by any symbol and will never be subservient to any man. We will tear down this and other actual/symbolic barriers to justice — eventually.”
Neal never mentioned in the letter that he was a football coach, a veteran, or an attorney licensed in two states, having graduated from West Virginia University College of Law on a full ride fellowship. He only said he was a resident of Murray, and a Black man. He wanted to see what title people would choose and how people would address him without any labels.
“If you write that as an attorney, do you get the same attention that you’d write it as a Marine?”
Since then, the response has been roaring, bringing nationwide media attention to the small town.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Murray State University, and former Murray State basketball star Ja Morant have also all called for the removal of the statue. An online petition calling for its removal as of Thursday has more than 9,700 signatures; another petition opposing the removal has over 2,500 signatures. The debate has spilled into the streets, as protesters called for the monument’s removal. Some of those demonstrators were sprayed with pepper spray by White men from out of town.
Neal said he’s received online messages threatening violence against him, some using racial slurs. He said he knew the risk of publishing the letter, but the risk of complacency and losing an opportunity to remove a symbol of racist intimidation from an outdated era was even greater.
“There’s nobody with a cape that’s coming out of the phone booth to come save me,” Neal said. “If you have the training in and the ability to do something and you choose not to under the current circumstances that we’re in, then you’re okay with it, and you’re complicit with what’s going on.”
Upstairs in the Neal home, the kids have a space-themed fort with galaxies and stars swirling on the cover; Neal went to a space camp in fourth grade and wanted to be an astronaut for years. On the shelves of the play room are books highlighting figures like Harriet Tubman, who used the stars to guide people to freedom, and Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space.
“Just like that statue’s a symbol to discourage us from pursuing certain jobs or professions or justice, you know, what’s not up there are people like Harriet Tubman or Mae Jemison,” Neal said, pointing to the books on the shelf. “So, just with tearing down, you have to build up. Every girl should know that she can be an astronaut.”
It’s a message of embracing dreams and speaking up that he ultimately wants to pass down to his children, he said. Seizing the momentum of nationwide protests in large cities and small towns alike calling for racial justice and police accountability, the will to publish that open letter wasn’t just a spur of the moment decision for him.
As Confederate monuments come down in larger cities across the country, Neal is on the forefront of battle similar to others taking place in smaller towns over what a community chooses to memorialize. At first, he stood alone in publishing that letter, using a voice he’s honed over the course of his life.
Credit Courtesy Sherman Neal
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Sherman Neal, deployed in Iraq.
Leading By Example
Neal grew up in Naperville, Illinois, a west suburb of Chicago, going to parades in the ’90s celebrating the Chicago Bulls’ NBA championships.
A love for football started early, too, with memories of juking around the kitchen table and playing on Pop Warner football teams. He also doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t learning about slavery in the United States and the legacy of the Confederacy.
“There’s weekends where we go to Springfield — this is five hours away — and go to [Abraham] Lincoln’s tomb,” Neal said. “I got older and I realized everything has some context.”
One of the children’s books in his Murray home that he remembers reading as a child is “Pink and Say,” a story about a former slave, Pink, saving a white Union soldier, Say, and nursing him back to health. The two are eventually captured by Confederate marauders; Say is released, while Pink is hanged.
Neal also wrote a series of letters while serving in-school suspension in middle school, re-writing and replacing words in the Emancipation Proclamation and Declaration of Independence so that it would apply for students.
“My mom actually made me take that to the city council and petition against my assistant principal,” Neal said. “She had me doing things like that at an early age.”
He credits his mom, Michelle Neal, for much of his independent spirit. She came to the United States to escape civil war in Liberia, and became an immigration attorney in Chicago. Neal had dual-citizenship with Liberia until he renounced it to join the Marine Corps; his sister also represented Liberia in track and field in the 2016 African Championships.
He would wander the Chicago streets from his mom’s office near DePaul University, sometimes sitting in on meetings she had with people from diverse backgrounds, ranging from east African, Mexican, Swedish, Pakistani, and more.
When the Trump administration announced a travel ban in 2017 on countries in the Middle East and Africa, Michelle Neal rushed to Chicago O’Hare Airport to help those in legal turmoil. Sherman Neal said her work has influenced his own choices.
“All the decisions that I’ve made involve some way shape or form of helping people, from a personal standpoint and career standpoint,” Neal said. “It’s not a ‘when you can,’ it’s like, ‘you shall and you’re gonna find a way.’ And it’s been leading by example.”
As he progressed further in his legal career in the armed forces, he began to notice more and more the context and history of the world around him.
In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he played on special teams for Middle Tennessee University’s football team, he learned about the history of a “Johnny Rebel” Confederate monument, originally erected in front of the county courthouse, which a local historian believes was erected as a form of racist intimidation.
When he was in law school at West Virginia University, he learned about the effects of mass incarceration on minorities, with Black men serving prison sentences at almost six times the rate of White men.
And in the Marines, he learned that while institutions can be slow to change, change is not impossible. Neal recalled when he was preparing for his second deployment to serve as a logistics officer in Iraq he was boarding a bus that would take him and his fellow Marines to their plane. Near that bus door was a red Ford Bronco with a Confederate flag. His anger boiled over on the bus, and a friend had to calm him down.
“What you allow to happen on base is a choice, is a reflection of your values,” Neal said. “I personally never had like a line of people supporting me saying any of these things.”
Every year, he submitted feedback to the Marine Corps calling for the removal of Confederate symbols and flags from military installations. He didn’t see much change while he was in the Corps. But in the wake of recent nationwide protests, the Corps relented, banning public display of the battle flag including bumper stickers and mugs.
Now in Murray, he turns his gaze to Robert E. Lee next to the Calloway County courthouse.
In an open letter published by the Murray State History Department, faculty in the department said the statue represented a “Lost Cause ideology” similar to other Confederate monuments erected during that time frame, symbols of “white power and black oppression.”
Neal isn’t specifically advocating for the destruction of the statue, but says it needs to be removed because of the message it carries next to the courthouse. When he first arrived in Murray, he appreciated the historical markers and context provided by the Fort Donelson National Battlefield across the state border in Tennessee, a battlefield managed by the National Park Service.
But the county courthouse statue’s purpose isn’t to provide history or context, he said.
“You’re sending a message to Black people in the community,” Neal said. “With it having been built in 1917 and knowing about the genesis of where all these came from, I don’t know how you can make a legitimate argument that you’re not doing that.”
Inaction And Confrontation
Neal wore a grey suit and dark tie with a blue cloth face mask, notes jotted down on a Murray State-themed pad. Again, he stood alone.
On June 16, he approached the Calloway County Fiscal Court at their monthly meeting to address county leadership on why the monument should be removed. The monument was on county property, and therefore the decision whether to remove it is up to the county.
He didn’t have a prepared statement, but he didn’t need one. He said he felt more comfortable speaking from the heart.
“Nothing changes in this country or this community, or legally, without the will of the people behind it,” Neal told county Judge-Executive Kenny Imes and the county magistrates. “Robert E. Lee himself, who in fact is the man who’s on that statue, if nothing else he was a member of the United States Army before resigning his commission to become an enemy combatant. And for that reason alone, we should not have that man on public property.”
Imes had previously said he didn’t associate the statue with racism, but was willing to listen to Neal and others. Imes had said the fiscal court would need to get permission from the Kentucky Heritage Military Commission before taking action, as the Confederate monument is listed as a military heritage object. Imes in 2018 had also suggested he would need to be “hauled off” by federal marshals for the monument to be removed.
Credit Liam Niemeyer/ Ohio Valley ReSource
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Sherman Neal waits to speak before the Calloway County Fiscal Court on June 17 to advocate for the removal of the Confederate monument.
Going into the meeting, Neal was clear with his call to action: he wanted at least a resolution stating intent to remove the monument, even if the fiscal court couldn’t yet officially approve the removal. He sent county leadership the day before a 36-page document outlining his and other supporters’ platform.
“We have the opportunity right now to be an exemplar for what happens and what can happen when you handle these type of divisive issues in a civil manner, specifically in towns like this,” Neal added. “Rather than being what’s wrong, in having that statue be the manifestation of what’s wrong and being the beacon to everybody in the nation that we don’t care about the thoughts and feelings of others.”
The fiscal court also allowed another man to speak, this time opposing the removal. Murray resident Blake Hughes compared the removal to “cultural genocide” and said that advocates with “Marxist intent” were destroying history because “they hate us, our nation, and our God.”
He also said he was worried the monument would be torn down outside the due process of government, and that people who haven’t lived in the county long were dictating historical interpretations of monuments to people who have lived in the county their entire life.
Imes didn’t side with either man. He decided to delay instead, in an effort to sort out “legal issues” regarding the monument that he didn’t specify.
For Neal, it meant disappointment and anger, his usually steady voice shaking.
“Am I a communist? Am I a citizen? Am I in the wrong place? Is it the wrong time? Just, you know, what sticks to the wall,” he said, referring to Hughes’ speech. “I dislike when people say the word ‘dog whistles,’ because it’s not. It’s overt calls to White supremacist groups to try to stop progress.”
After the meeting, Neal confronted Hughes, sparking a debate over the monument’s meaning, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the uncertain future ahead.
“How will removing the Robert E. Lee statue stop oppression? How will it stop police brutality?” Hughes asked.
“We can’t even get to the substantive talk because we’re stuck talking about a rock of an enemy combatant on public property,” Neal said. “So the actual, ‘will it stop?’ — the knee being placed on a neck — by removing that statue? Absolutely not. But we can get to that conversation.”
“Many people are not even waiting to go through the legal system to remove these statues. And where does it end? I mean, a lot of people in history have been remembered for great things and have done terrible things,” Hughes said.
“Here’s where it ends,” Neal said. “It ends when someone like you can not go into a courtroom and tell me that I don’t have the right to speak on a topic that’s afforded to me by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.”
The Fourteenth Amendment granted full citizenship to all persons born and naturalized in the United States, including those who were formerly enslaved.
Sherman Neal, posing with Commendation Medals he earned with the U.S. Marine Corps Credit Liam Niemeyer/ Ohio Valley ReSource
Neal isn’t sure exactly what is next in the battle over a monument he brought into the national spotlight weeks ago. He plans to offer university facilities as an option for a forum on the statue. Over the course of several interviews, he mentioned Thurgood Marshall, the lawyer who argued for integration and eventually became a Supreme Court Justice, as inspiration.
“If Thurgood Marshall can litigate for probably about ten years to strategize and get Brown v. Board of Education passed to get me to the point where I can be here now, coaching Black players and White players in the same place, I can probably go ten days, whatever struggle this is, to remove a symbol of segregation and hate.”
West Virginia seceded from Virginia 157 years ago to join the Union and reject the Confederate States of America. While Confederate monuments have been toppled or ordered down elsewhere across the country, they still stand in West Virginia.
There are 21 statues, memorials and other markers honoring Confederate generals and soldiers in the state — on state park resorts, schools, elsewhere according to data compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Given West Virginia’s split from its neighbor and, thus, the Confederacy, memorials to those who fought for the South serve as a historical paradox.
Kevin Levin, a Boston-based historian and educator who focuses on public memory and the Civil War, notes that the United Daughters of the Confederacy — a group whose goal was to memorialize the southern army — gave some of the monuments to communities in West Virginia during the Jim Crow era of segregation and the civil rights movement.
“We always need to remember that the monuments always reflect the values of the community — the individuals or organizations that erected them and dedicated them originally,” Levin said.
Most of the efforts to remove monuments have been in larger cities with more diverse populations. But, Levin said, even though statues remain intact here, the fact that West Virginians are even discussing the issue is remarkable.
“I think where to look and one way to measure the progress — if you want to call it that — is to look at the places that are even debating this issue,” he explained
Much of the conversation here has focused on Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, a Confederate general who was born in 1824 in present-day Clarksburg, West Virginia. Jackson, who owned six slaves and is one of the most recognizable figures of the Civil War, is memorialized in more than a dozen states.
Many who attended the commission meeting — either in person or virtually — argued that removing the statue of Jackson would be an effort to “erase history.”
“Where do we let it end? When do we let it end? Are we going to be like everybody else and see people burn them because of opinion — because you don’t like this or you don’t like that?” Larry Starkey asked.
He also wondered whether other controversial figures who are honored in the state should face similar criticism.
“Should we change Robert C. Byrd’s name because he was in the KKK at one time? Should we change the Italian festival cause Mussolini fought against the United States government. That’s all foolish. You can’t change history,” Starkey said.
But there were others who called for the statue of Gen. Jackson to be removed, including two men who identified themselves as distant relatives.
“If you want to talk about whose birthright this is and whose opinion should be heard, it seems like I have some qualifications here,” said Colin Grant Jackson, who identified himself as a direct descendant of the Confederate general. “I personally believe that this statute does not belong in front of a building that is supposed to be devoted to impartial justice.”
Despite the commission voting against removal, some locals and others concerned about the message the statue sends say they’ll continue to fight to bring it down. An ongoing campaign is lobbying members of the commission to reconsider the issue.
In Charleston, a bust and statue of Jackson are on display on the grounds of the state Capitol. A middle school there, which has the state’s highest percentage of black students, bears his name.
Bishop Wayne Crozier, of Charleston, has been part of the effort to rename Stonewall Jackson Middle School.
“There is a difference between remembering history and revering history. No one is saying ‘forget it,’” Crozier said. “But we don’t have to act — we don’t have to make heroes out of monsters.”
Discussions are ongoing about possibly renaming the school after influential black educator Booker T. Washington, historian Carter G. Woodson or NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson.
Crozier said he focused on the school because renaming it would be a tangible change that would have lasting impact. He said too often protests of racial injustice do not bring about significant progress.
“A lot of times, I’ll just sort of wonder, Okay, what happens after the protest is over? I think sometimes the power structure, just sort of [says] ‘Okay, we’ll wait until this blows over, and we return to the status quo,’” he said.
While activists push for a more sensitive name for the school, the Kanawha County Board of Education says they will consider the issue at its July 6 meeting. But some board members are pushing back on the idea to rename Stonewall Jackson Middle School.
“I feel like maybe this is a knee jerk option, you know, with all the craziness and the sadness has happened in our country, that this is a bigger push,” school board member Becky Jordon said. “Because, I mean, we’ve heard mumblings of you know, some people over the years wanting to change them while but it never got any energy, never really got moving.”
Some who support Jackson memorials argue that he should be judged by his “respectable” deeds such as conducting a Sunday School for enslaved black people and encouraging literacy. The American Civil War Museum has said these facts serve as “a foundation for great misunderstanding” in allowing Confederate heritage activists to attempt to distance the South’s cause away from slavery.
College of Southern Maryland professor of history and West Virginia native Dr. Cicero Fain said viewing figures like Jackson in such a way overlooks a fundamental question in the current debate.
“The barometer by which one should judge a slaveholder is ‘Did he make the ultimate sacrifice and a shift away from the economic imperative — and instead embrace a moral imperative?’ And he didn’t,” Fain said.
Unlike monuments in other places, those erected in West Virginia have seen no reported vandalism. Fain said he believes statues here will remain standing unless there are dramatic systemic changes, especially with high-ranking public officials mostly mum on the matter.
“I don’t think the state population is sufficient, the Black population is sufficient, to really bring about significant change without the power — of course, corporate, education, as well as government — bringing about some real hard conversations,” Fain said.
Republican Gov. Jim Justice said whether the memorials at the state Capitol should remain are a matter for the Legislature to consider. He avoided saying whether he wants to see them taken down. But state code gives a commission, which the governor partially appoints, authority to decide on the future of statues on Capitol grounds.
“I don’t think I have any right to make a decision. I think that’s a legislative right,” Justice said. “From the standpoint of my personal beliefs, I don’t feel like — that — anyone should feel uncomfortable here. This is our capitol. This is our state. This is our people.”
As for monuments located elsewhere, those decisions are in the hands of local governments, boards or, maybe — albeit unlikely — protesters themselves.
The Harrison County Commission voted Wednesday not to remove a statue of a Confederate general that stands in front of the county courthouse in downtown Clarksburg. Calls for the removal of monuments and markers honoring Confederate figures come amid protests against systemic racism and police brutality.
After an hour and a half of public comment, the Harrison County Commission rejected a motion to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson and return it to the Daughters of Confederacy, the organization that gifted the statue in 1953.
The effort to remove and return the statue failed on a 1-2 vote with David Hinkle supporting the motion. Commission president Ron Watson and Patsy Trecost voted for the monument to remain.
Gen. Jackson was born in Clarksburg, Virginia in 1824 and before West Virginia became a state, owned six slaves. His name is used to mark other points of interest throughout North Central West Virginia.
Many who spoke at Wednesday’s meeting said removing the statue would be “erasing history.” Many speakers called for the statue to remain downtown or to put its fate in the hands of the general public.
One speaker, Bill Foster called Gen. Jackson an “old time hero” whose legacy should be preserved. He argued the statue should not be considered offensive, given the racial makeup of those who were attending Wednesday’s meeting to speak about Gen. Jackson’s legacy.
“I’m sorry, but if there’s nobody black here to complain about it, I don’t know what the complaint is,” Foster questioned as he stood in front of the commission.
Others, like Kenneth Drum, wondered to what end the commission would go to in removing other pieces of history found in the courthouse.
“If we take this statute down, are we’re going to take down every other picture in this building? Because some of them represent the same thing,” Drum said while also calling for the question to be put to a vote of the general public.
Some who attended the meeting argued Gen. Jackson should be judged by his more respectable deeds.
“He owned slaves. He and his wife were given slaves,” George Brown said. “At the same time, they both taught black children in a Presbyterian Sunday school — and it’s said that he and his wife were the ones who started that program.”
Those who spoke in support of removing the statue attempted to point to the historical context under which the statue came to be placed in Clarksburg. As Madison Douglas noted, historical facts point to two spikes in the erection of Confederate monuments — first during the Jim Crow era in the early 1900s and again during the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and ‘60s.
“It’s not a natural part of history,” Douglas said. “It was a deliberate choice to erect it in a time when civil rights for black people were advancing and people chose to hold up the Confederacy and, by extension, white supremacy.”
Two speakers who identified themselves as relatives of Gen. Jackson called for the statue to be removed. Colin Grant Jackson, who is originally from Clarksburg but now lives in Illinois, attended Wednesday’s meeting virtually to say that decisions on the statue’s fate would be his “birthright” as much as anyone’s.
“I personally believe that this statute does not belong in front of a building that is supposed to be devoted to impartial justice,” Colin Grant Jackson said.
He stated that the statue’s placement in Clarksburg — as well as other monuments around the nation around the same time period — indicates that the intended message was to spread fear amongst black people and was motivated by white supremacy.
“I’m a lifelong Civil War buff and I understand the fascinating history of Jackson and tragedy of the Civil War,” he said. “But I also believe that a heroic statue of his cause in front of the courthouse sends a very specific message of white supremacy against the black population of the county.”
Ryan DeBarr identified himself as a descendant of Gen. Jackson’s grandfather, George Jackson, which makes DeBarr a distant cousin of the Confederate general. He, too, argued that the statue should be removed from downtown. DeBarr said the statue represented an “intentional slap in the face” to Clarksburg, the state of West Virginia and black citizens.
“What does it say that a memorial to 24,000 Union soldiers from West Virginia was replaced with [a monument of] one Confederate general?” DeBarr questioned. “What does it say that a statue of a Confederate general went up at the very spot that West Virginia statehood began? What does it say that a statue of a slave owner went up in 1953 at the height of the desegregation conflict? It says it’s not really about history.”
Some who expressed a desire to speak during Wednesday’s meeting told West Virginia Public Broadcasting they attempted to phone into the meeting, but were turned away and unable to express their thoughts. Another person who attended the meeting virtually noted they were turned away from attempting to attend in person.
County administrator Willie Parker said security at the courthouse was instructed to maintain social distancing guidelines and limit the amount of in-person attendees at the meeting. Parker said he had no knowledge of anyone being denied access to the meeting virtually or by phone.
In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam has called for statues of Confederate generals to be removed from Richmond, although courts have halted some of those removals. In some places, Confederate monuments have been vandalized and or toppled by those protesting racism in the United States.
Friday marks June 19 — or Juneteenth — the anniversary of the date in 1865 when African Americans in Texas were made aware that the Emancipation Proclamation that was declared more than two years earlier.
West Virginia Day, a state holiday celebrating the secession from Virginia and the Confederacy, is Saturday, June 20.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified Ryan DeBarr’s relationship to Gen. Stonewall Jackson. DeBarr is a distant relative of the confederate general, not a direct descendant. The article has been updated to reflect the proper relationship.
By now it’s become a familiar scene: Marchers fill the streets with placards proclaiming “Black Lives Matter,” and chants fill the air as the demonstrators recite the names of those lost.
But there’s something different about some of these protests around the Ohio Valley in the past week. They’re not just happening in the larger cities such as Louisville, Lexington, Columbus and Cincinnati. Smaller college towns such asAthens, Ohio, andMorgantown, West Virginia, have seen marches. Communities in Kentucky farmland and the heart of Appalachian coal country, such as Hazard and Harlan, Kentucky, have seen people protesting against racial injustice and police violence.
“Because prejudice here is as old as our dialect here for some people, and it’s inherited,” Bree Carr said. The 18-year-old from Harlan, Kentucky, said she protested to be an ally for people of color so they will know they have support. “There are so many other people behind them that support you, and hear you, and want to see you.”
Bowling Green, Kentucky, has seenconsecutive days of protest, drawing up to a thousand people at one event. Civil Rights activist Charles Neblett sang with theFreedom Singers in the 1960s to fight segregation. Neblett said he was thirteen when Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi. He told protesters at the Warren County Justice Center that prejudice and injustice have persisted for too long.
“When is it gonna stop? I’m tired. And more people got to step up and do this thing,” he said.
The protests in smaller cities and towns have been overwhelmingly peaceful. But they have not been without confrontation. A protestplanned for Charleston, West Virginia, was postponed after organizers said they received threats, although a smaller group went ahead with a demonstration. Carr said she received threats over the demonstrations in Harlan, and in western Kentucky marchers have faced assaults.
A video from a march on June 2 in Murray, Kentucky, showed a white motorist using pepper spray on marchers as he drove by. The man, who was from Paducah, Kentucky, was arrested. Another white man was later arrested for pointing a weapon at demonstrators in Murray.
Credit Courtesy Audrey Elizabeth Kellett
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A Facebook video shows a man assaulting marchers in Murray, KY, with chemical spray.
The marchers in Murray invoked the names of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, both killed by police. But another issue is animating the protests here as well. Demonstrators are calling for the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee next to the Calloway County courthouse, spurred by anopen letter issued by a football coach at the local university.
As in other places, the protests here are reviving older debates about statues and memorials dedicated to the Confederacy. Louisville officials on Mondayremoved the controversial equestrian statue of John B. Castleman, a Confederate officer, something city leaders had proposed years ago.
It remains to be seen if the same will happen in small towns like Murray. On Monday, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshearcalled for Murray’s statue to come down after being asked a question about it during a press conference.
The calls to remove Confederate memorials in rural communities are also part of a larger theme of confronting a history and stigma of racism in some smaller towns.
In Marshall County, Kentucky, where the population is nearly 98 percent white, more than a hundred people marched on Friday around the courthouse square. Only a few months earlier the county’s judge-executive had allowed a confederate battle flag to fly at the courthouse before a backlashforced its removal.
Credit Liam Niemeyer / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
A protest in Marshall Co., KY, where a confederate flag recently flew over the county courthouse.
Malique Humphries, a 23-year-old black man from neighboring county, says he was afraid to protest in Marshall County after being in other protests because of the county’s perceived racist reputation.
“I have a six-year-old daughter,” he said, “and I felt uncomfortable to come here, you understand that?”
Yet he came anyway to join other Marshall County residents to start a larger conversion about racial injustice, police accountability, and loving one another.
“We should feel comfortable anywhere we want to go, we should be allowed to go anywhere we want to go, it shouldn’t matter if the majority is white or not, we should feel comfortable anywhere on this earth.”
Humphries said he hopes protests like these will start to bring change where it is needed, at the local level.
Credit Claudia Cisneros / WOUB
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WOUB
Demonstrators in Athens, Ohio.
ReSource reporters Sydney Boles, Brittany Patterson, Aaron Payne, and Becca Schimmel contributed material for this story.
When we learn our history, we see things that reflect our past. Paintings of famous battles and statues of men who were heroes to some. But how we interpret our legacy changes. Time can warp our notion of a once righteous cause.
There are examples around the world of ways we have edited our past. In the U.S., recent decisions to move Confederate monuments and take down Confederate flags. But the effort to cleanse the past is global. And in places with a much longer history, the disagreements can be more contentious and complex.
For this episode, Trey travels to Skopje, North Macedonia to speak with locals about controversial statues honoring Alexander the Great. He also visits a cemetery in Corinth, Mississippi to visit the graves of soldiers decorated with the Confederate battle flag. Trey also examines the origins and evolution of the song Dixie.
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