Southern mayors and symbols of the Confederacy

The South Carolina Confederate Memorial and flag in front of the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina.

June 29, 2015
(updated February 11, 2016)
By Charles Aull

"It sends, at best, mixed messages and, at worst, for hateful people like [Dylann Roof], it’s an affirmation because they have appropriated something and used it as a symbol of hatred. So I think that it needs to go into a museum and I think it will." -Joseph P. Riley

So spoke Joseph P. Riley, the 10-term mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, as he advocated for the removal of a Confederate flag hanging outside the South Carolina statehouse on June 21, only four days after a lone gunman left nine dead at a historic African-American church in Charleston. Dylann Roof, the accused shooter, is alleged to have targeted Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for racial reasons. Investigators have found pictures of Roof posing with the Confederate flag, along with rhetoric and literature commonly associated with white supremacist ideology, on a website registered to his name.

Mayor Riley’s remarks came amidst a larger conversation about the future of Confederate symbols in American public spaces that has swept across the country in the wake of the shooting. While the opinions of state and national figures have by-and-large dominated media coverage of this issue, Riley’s statement serves as a good reminder that this conversation is playing out at the local level as well. In fact, the mayors of some of the biggest cities in the South have weighed in on where they think Confederate symbols belong. Their opinions have varied from requests to state officials for the removal of flags to calling for the exhumation of a Confederate general.

In Tampa, Florida, where over 300 cars and trucks decked out in Confederate memorabilia participated in a "Drive for Pride" event last Friday, second-term mayor Bob Buckhorn has called for the removal of a Confederate flag that hangs over Interstate 4 just outside of Tampa. The flag is said to be the largest of its kind in the world and sits on private property in compliance with state and county laws, putting it far out of Buckhorn’s jurisdictional reach. (It is technically located in the city of Brandon, just east of Tampa). Buckhorn has acknowledged this much, but he has called for the flag's removal anyway, saying:

"We can add our voices and ask them to look at their conscience and look at their soul and recognize what a hateful symbol that is of a dark chapter in America's history—and recognize that people are offended by that, people are hurt by that." -Bob Buckhorn

In Orlando, Mayor Buddy Dyer’s administration has been more guarded in its approach to the issue. A local group there has begun pushing for the removal of a Confederate memorial from a city park surrounding Lake Eola, but the mayor's office has only said that "We are open to exploring options for the future of this statue." A spokesperson for the mayor added, "We pride ourselves in being a diverse and inclusive community and value the concern raised by a citizen regarding the statue that has been in Lake Eola for nearly 100 years."

Other big-city Southern mayors have taken notably more aggressive, and often emotional, stances. In Memphis, Tennessee, a city with an African-American population of about 63 percent, Mayor A. C. Wharton called not only for the removal of a statue dedicated to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest from a Memphis park but also for the exhumation of Forrest and his wife, who have been buried beneath the monument for over a century. Forrest was a prominent (and deeply controversial) general in the Confederate Army who made millions before the war in the slave trade and cotton industry. After the war, he is known to have played a significant part in the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, though some have disputed this. Wharton did not mince words in his call for Forrest’s removal:

"These relics, these messages of this despicable period of this great nation, it's time for those to be moved. I despise whatever the Confederacy stood for. This is not just an ordinary monument. This is a monument to a man who was the avowed founder of the organization that has as its purpose the intimidation, the oppression of black folks." -A. C. Wharton

Mitch Landrieu in New Orleans—which, like Memphis, has a black population of over 60 percent—spoke last week about the future of a monument in the city’s downtown (see below) dedicated to another Confederate general: Robert E. Lee. He told a crowd that "Symbols really do matter. Symbols should reflect who we really are as a people." In the speech, Landrieu went on to imagine how he would respond if he were a black man and his daughter asked him why the city had erected a statue in honor of Lee, saying, "Right now I can't answer that question, as a dad." New Orleans is celebrating its tricentennial in 2018, and Landrieu has asked the commission in charge of the celebrations to initiate a discussion on whether the statue should remain or be removed.

Lee Circle in New Orleans.

Baton Rouge Mayor Mitch Landrieu supported a 6-1 vote of the city council to remove statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, P.G.T. Beauregard and the White League, "a violent white-supremacist militia." While the vote authorized the removal of the monuments, it did not definitively settle what would be done with them afterwards. At the time of the council vote, the possibility of creating a historical context park to place them in was discussed. The announcement that the removal of the statues would be funded my an anonymous donor, however, sparked rumors. It was speculated that John Cummings, who has built a museum about slavery at Whitney Plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish, was the source of the money and that he would receive the statues after their removal. The mayor's chief council lobbyist Eric Granderson told the city council that "he was not aware of anything" about such a plan at the council's meeting on February 4, 2016. The process of removing the statues faced delays after the first contractor hired for the job withdrew from the project because the company received death threats.

Atlanta’s mayor, Kasim Reed, has also been outspoken about Confederate symbols, recently telling Bloomberg Politics that "it’s time to put the Confederate flag to bed." He also called Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal’s (R) decision not to remove the Confederate emblem from state license plates a "mistake," noting, "I think that we should look on a case by case basis, and just be more vigilant about when we utilize state action or municipal action to address what is, in my opinion, a clear symbol of hate that really does not have a place in our current national conversation and should be left in the past." Reed has a long history with the flag in Georgia politics. As a freshman Democratic state senator in 2003, he played a key role in brokering the deal that raised Georgia’s current state flag, which, unlike its two predecessors, noticeably lacks Confederate symbolism.

The debate over the flag has even made its way into one of the most highly anticipated mayoral elections of the year in the city of Nashville, Tennessee. Last week, a Facebook page targeted Nashville mayoral candidate Charles Robert Bone for investing in a restaurant that featured a painting of a women wearing a Confederate flag bikini. Shortly thereafter Bone asked the owners to take the painting down. The Facebook page appeared following a mayoral debate on June 18, in which one of Bone’s opponents, Bill Freeman, made a controversial statement about the Charleston shooting, saying that it was "not necessarily about racial profiling." He later said that race played an obvious role in the event. Bone’s supporters—not to be confused with Bone’s campaign—have argued that Freeman’s camp could have been behind the Facebook page, using it, they allege, to draw attention away from Freeman’s comments on what motivated the Charleston shooter.

A number of Southern cities and school districts are holding elections in the second half of 2015. As the situation in Nashville demonstrates, the controversy over Confederate symbols in American public spaces could become a significant issue in these contests, and one could justifiably anticipate other mayors and local candidates taking a stance on the issue one way or the other in the coming weeks.

See also

• 2016 presidential candidates on the Charleston church shooting
• Nashville, Tennessee municipal elections, 2015