SHREVEPORT, La. -
As the nation debates the Confederate battle flag's place in modern society, some local civil rights leaders are calling for the removal of a Shreveport memorial featuring Civil War generals and iconography.
Shreveport NAACP president Lloyd Thompson said Wednesday it's time to remove the Confederate Monument that currently sits in front of the district courthouse's main entrance. He plans to ask the Caddo Commission to pay for the $300,000 moving cost.
"It becomes an indictment on us as a community to allow those folks to walk past their statue on their way to get justice," Thompson said of the 30-foot statue.
Shreveport historian Gary Joiner, who is also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, says the memorial marks a specific moment in history: when this same spot of land served as the last capital of the Confederate States of America.
"It's really more about the end of the Confederacy and the disbanding of the armies than anything else," Joiner said. "It's an integral part of our history."
While Thompson plans to ask the Caddo Commission for help moving the monument, questions remain over who owns the land. Monument supporters say the United Daughters of the Confederacy own the statue
The application for inclusion in National Register of Historical Places outlines the complicated history:
"The police jury, the forerunner of the modern Caddo Parish Commission at that time, also reserved for the UDC a plot of land large enough to accommodate the monument on the Courthouse Square. This reservation, made on June 18, 1903, gave the UDC use of this plot in perpetuity, but did not actually convey or donate the plot to them. Although the police jury appears to have intended to do so, there is no record that such conveyance was actually ever made."
"Let's bring the statue down," Thompson said. "Let's bring peace to our community. Let's show them that we're bigger than the past, that we're ready to move forward."
Built in 1906 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the statue includes sculptures of Generals Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson, PGT Beauregard, and Gov. Henry Allen.
A Confederate flag was raised on the same spot in 1951. In 1991, Shreveport resident Ronald Hamilton was arrested after burning a separate Confederate flag on the courthouse grounds. The flag was removed in 2011.
