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Old 12-10-2019, 07:45 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll View Post
Any debate about removing the Henry Grady statue from its current location on Marietta Street in Downtown Atlanta appears to be moot.

That is because Georgia state law expressly prohibits the removal of publicly-owned monuments like said statue of Henry Grady in Downtown Atlanta.
I thought the law was just for Confederate monuments, B2R. Henry Grady did support white supremacy but I don't think he was a Confederate hero.

 
Old 12-10-2019, 09:25 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
I thought the law was just for Confederate monuments, B2R. Henry Grady did support white supremacy but I don't think he was a Confederate hero.
From what I understand, the law was aimed directly at protecting confederate monuments, but applies to all public monuments... With the stated explanation by Georgia legislative leaders that the law is not just aimed at protecting monuments to confederate/post-confederate/confederate-sympathetic and Jim Crow-era figures.

Which is something that makes sense from the standpoint of Georgia state legislators who not only vehemently object to the removal and relocation of monuments honoring confederate figures, but also to the removal and relocation of monuments honoring post-confederate and Jim Crow-era figures like Henry Grady who may have openly supported and espoused confederate and white supremacist views.

If I recall correctly, the State of Georgia has actually made it more difficult to remove/relocate and alter monuments to confederate/post-confederate and Jim Crow-era figures on two occasions in recent times.

The first occasion was in 2001 when the state made illegal to remove and/or relocate monuments to confederate and Jim Crow-era figures in exchange for removing the confederate battle emblem from the Georgia state flag.

The second occasion was earlier this year when the Georgia state legislature made it much tougher to remove/relocate/alter publicly-funded monuments by making the penalties increasingly severe to do so... All with the intention of making it impossible to remove/relocate/alter monuments to confederate/post-confederate and Jim Crow-era figures from public spaces.

From what I understand, rural and outer-exurban Georgia state legislators were really motivated to increase the penalties for the attempted removal/altering of confederate and Jim Crow-era monuments after seeing what has been going on with the removal of confederate and Jim Crow-era monuments in the neighboring Southeastern state of North Carolina, where the effort to remove confederate monuments appears to have gained much steam with much of the public.

Deeply conservative rural and outer-exurban Georgia legislators were also intensely angered when the City of Atlanta recently changed the name of confederate Avenue to United Avenue in Southeast Atlanta.

Those rural and outer-exurban state legislators considered the confederate Avenue street name to be a public monument to the confederacy and considered the change of the name of the street to United Avenue to be a huge affront to and a direct attack on their values.

So the state responded to the continued removal of confederate names from Atlanta city streets by passing a law making it more difficult to remove/relocate/alter confederate and Jim Crow-era monuments.

I'm not sure if the state law prohibiting the removal/relocation/altering of public monuments officially applies to street names... But I am sure that many state legislators view the removal of confederate names from public streets as violating the spirit of that law at the very least.
 
Old 12-10-2019, 09:38 PM
 
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Thanks, B2R.

Here's Jim Galloway's article citing the statute, and it seems to apply only to "any privately owned monument, plaque, marker, or memorial which is dedicated to, honors, or recounts the military service of any past or present military personnel of this state, the United States of America or the several states thereof, or the Confederate States of America or the several states thereof."

https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/th...d5JFo40QMS4RJ/


Would that cover somebody like Henry Grady, since he wasn't in the Confederate military?
 
Old 12-10-2019, 10:24 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
Thanks, B2R.

Here's Jim Galloway's article citing the statute, and it seems to apply only to "any privately owned monument, plaque, marker, or memorial which is dedicated to, honors, or recounts the military service of any past or present military personnel of this state, the United States of America or the several states thereof, or the Confederate States of America or the several states thereof."

https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/th...d5JFo40QMS4RJ/


Would that cover somebody like Henry Grady, since he wasn't in the Confederate military?
I think that what you linked to was the law protecting confederate monuments (from 2001) before it was changed and broadened to apply to all publicly-funded monuments during this most recent session of the Georgia General Assembly in spring 2019.

This is from the article that the OP (Dreamer D) linked to at the beginning of this thread:
Quote:
Moving the statue, though, is prohibited under a new state law. The Georgia Legislature passed a bill earlier this year increasing the penalties against those who damage the state’s public and private monuments that also makes it tougher to remove and replace Confederate markers.
Georgia State students demand Atlanta mayor move Henry Grady statue (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The 2001 law appeared to apply only to "privately owned" confederate and military monuments.

The 2019 law applies to all monuments, both privately-owned and publicly-owned (including said statue of Henry Grady in Downtown Atlanta) and is aimed at preventing monuments to confederate/post-confederate/Jim Crow-era figures from being removed, altered and defaced in an era of rising public opposition to monuments dedicated to historical figures who are believed by much of the public to have openly espoused white supremacist views.
 
Old 12-10-2019, 10:27 PM
 
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Thanks again for the clarification, B2R.
 
Old 12-11-2019, 06:48 AM
bu2
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DreamerD View Post
The first bolded: The biggest opposition to the statue being moved comes from a lot of people with a boomer mentality. Just reading the things I do on this specific forum reinforces this belief. There is a strong unwillingness for people to even consider change.

You wouldn't want to know how many students I've met who have a strong disconnect with their grandparents/parents because of their racism. I am not surprised to see this reaction because we grew up in it and it's a part of our culture. Just like it was normal to talk about Columbus and the glorious things he did for this country, his home country, etc., it is normal for people to engage in overwhelmingly positive talk when discussing Henry Grady.


Here's a quote from Grady:“The supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards – because the white race is the superior race,” Grady said at the Texas State Fair in 1887."
I also agree that art can set the tone for society. I am very observant of the space that this statue takes up. For a city that was known to be "too busy to hate" and that is now seen as one of the more progressive cities for blacks in terms of success, this statue paints a different picture and demonstrates the complete lack of empathy and hatefulness that is still present in large blocks of our society.


The resistance is expected. We are seeing powerful negative reactions to things in history class being challenged such as this person was great because he did x, y, and z, but failing to highlight the scores of people this person had killed. This person was great but for whom? This is a question I always see NOT asked.
MLK was a Communist during the cold war and a serial cheater on his wife. There are allegations he did far worse than just have affairs. That doesn't change the good he did, not just for African Americans, but for the whole country. No person is perfect.

Grady was a white supremacist, but did a lot of good for the entire south bringing it back into the mainstream. The south is better not remaining a rural backwater. Lincoln was a racist and wanted to send the slaves back to Africa. Do we remove his statues?
 
Old 12-11-2019, 06:51 AM
bu2
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll View Post
From what I understand, the law was aimed directly at protecting confederate monuments, but applies to all public monuments... With the stated explanation by Georgia legislative leaders that the law is not just aimed at protecting monuments to confederate/post-confederate/confederate-sympathetic and Jim Crow-era figures.

Which is something that makes sense from the standpoint of Georgia state legislators who not only vehemently object to the removal and relocation of monuments honoring confederate figures, but also to the removal and relocation of monuments honoring post-confederate and Jim Crow-era figures like Henry Grady who may have openly supported and espoused confederate and white supremacist views.

If I recall correctly, the State of Georgia has actually made it more difficult to remove/relocate and alter monuments to confederate/post-confederate and Jim Crow-era figures on two occasions in recent times.

The first occasion was in 2001 when the state made illegal to remove and/or relocate monuments to confederate and Jim Crow-era figures in exchange for removing the confederate battle emblem from the Georgia state flag.

The second occasion was earlier this year when the Georgia state legislature made it much tougher to remove/relocate/alter publicly-funded monuments by making the penalties increasingly severe to do so... All with the intention of making it impossible to remove/relocate/alter monuments to confederate/post-confederate and Jim Crow-era figures from public spaces.

From what I understand, rural and outer-exurban Georgia state legislators were really motivated to increase the penalties for the attempted removal/altering of confederate and Jim Crow-era monuments after seeing what has been going on with the removal of confederate and Jim Crow-era monuments in the neighboring Southeastern state of North Carolina, where the effort to remove confederate monuments appears to have gained much steam with much of the public.

Deeply conservative rural and outer-exurban Georgia legislators were also intensely angered when the City of Atlanta recently changed the name of confederate Avenue to United Avenue in Southeast Atlanta.

Those rural and outer-exurban state legislators considered the confederate Avenue street name to be a public monument to the confederacy and considered the change of the name of the street to United Avenue to be a huge affront to and a direct attack on their values.

So the state responded to the continued removal of confederate names from Atlanta city streets by passing a law making it more difficult to remove/relocate/alter confederate and Jim Crow-era monuments.

I'm not sure if the state law prohibiting the removal/relocation/altering of public monuments officially applies to street names... But I am sure that many state legislators view the removal of confederate names from public streets as violating the spirit of that law at the very least.
I never heard any negative comments about renaming Confederate Avenue except maybe from a few people who were going to have to change their addresses.
 
Old 12-11-2019, 06:53 AM
bu2
 
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Some of these (not necessarily this one) are art and are history. We don't want to be the Taliban destroying anything we don't like from the past.
 
Old 12-11-2019, 12:56 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2 View Post
I never heard any negative comments about renaming Confederate Avenue except maybe from a few people who were going to have to change their addresses.
I remember there being some conversation about whether the updated law preventing the removal/relocation/altering of public monuments (which was passed into law in 2019) would legally apply to streets named after confederate figures and the confederacy in general, including a street like confederate Avenue, which many in the state (including deeply conservative rural and outer-exurban state legislators) consider to be monuments to the confederacy along with statues and other physical monuments.

Obviously, that would be a matter for the courts to decide if a dispute over that issue ever went that far.

But no matter what happens with the technical legality of the 2019 law shielding publicly-funded monuments (like the Henry Grady statue) from removal, etc., the overall point remains that deeply conservative rural and outer-exurban interests are often angered when a progressive left-leaning city like Atlanta either removes or threatens to remove what are considered to be public monuments to confederate, post-confederate and jim crow-era figures.

Considering the current political climate, I do not even know if the City of Atlanta would might even try to rename streets named after confederate/post-confederate and jim crow-era figures... That's especially after Georgia legislators sent a clear and overt signal, with the 2019 public monuments law, that they do not want municipalities and local governments (like the City of Atlanta) removing the names of confederate and jim crow figures from public streets.

(… The City of Atlanta officially voted to change the name of confederate Avenue to United Avenue in very late-September 2018, almost 6 months before the Georgia Legislature updated the monuments law in late March 2019 to make it much more difficult to remove public monuments (including confederate/post-confederate/jim crow-era monuments) from public view... The act to rename confederate Avenue was also part of a larger plan to continue to remove confederate and jim crow-era names from public streets in the city of Atlanta.)

And I know for certain that a figure like Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms is not likely to expend any of her very limited political capital that she has with Georgia state government attempting to move a statue of Henry Grady off of Marietta Street in Downtown Atlanta.

That is because just the mere attempt to do so (particularly at this time of increasing angst amongst rural and exurban conservatives) would most assuredly be regarded as a hostile act of political war by the majority in the Georgia Legislature... And all of the attacks aimed at Atlanta (state takeover of the Airport, punishing Delta Airlines, attacking the TV/Film industry, etc.) would suddenly be back on the table in a major way.
 
Old 12-11-2019, 01:51 PM
 
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This is what a progressive Georgian sounded like in 1886,


But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee surrendered-I don't say when Johnson [sic] surrendered, because I understand he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last as the time when he determined to abandon any further prosecution of the struggle-when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnson [sic] quit, the South became, and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accept as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave were broken. Under the old regime the negroes were slaves to the South; the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple police regulations and feudal habit, was the only type possible under slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture but leaving the body chill and colorless.
The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement-a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core-a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace-and a diversified industry that meets the complex need of this complex age.
The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because through the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were beaten..
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