Local governments across Virginia are reconsidering their Confederate memorials — trying to figure out if they should be removed or relocated. But, as Michael Pope reports, one county is engaged in a different kind of discussion — adding a new monument to an existing Confederate statue.
Members of the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors are NOT debating whether they should get rid of their Confederate memorial. Instead they are deciding whether they should add an Emancipation Proclamation monument.
The chairman of the board says he wants the memorial to be in a place where lots of people would see it as they drive by. But Supervisor Mozell Booker says she wants it right next to the Confederate statue.
“Lots of people seeing it is not my purpose. My purpose is to have it in the Civil War Park so that the whole story can be told.”
Frank Earnest with Sons of Confederate Veterans says adding a monument to a park featuring a Confederate memorial creates what he says is a false narrative.
“It refocuses. There was one cause, and one cause only for the war and that was slavery. The good people of the North wanted to end slavery. The nasty old racists of the South wanted to keep slavery.”
The Board of Supervisors is waiting for an opinion Attorney General Mark Herring about whether adding a new monument to Civil War Park would run afoul of laws protecting the Confederate statue.