What's To Become of Montgomery's Confederate Iconography?

      There are multiple reminders in Alabama's capitol of the confederacy that once called it home.     

     The largest is the monument that the state-in-rebellion erected next to the Capitol building.

     Other states are tearing down their reminders of the losing side in the U.S. Civil War. This morning there's word of an agreement to place some statues in an African-American History museum.

RICHMOND — City and state officials have reached an agreement to transfer ownership of the statue and pedestal of Gen. Robert E. Lee to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, which has also agreed to take possession of all the other Confederate memorials removed from Richmond since last year. (Washington Post story).

     Could a similar exchange work here in Alabama? Could they be transferred to a new section of the EJI Lynching memorial, for example?

(The Confederate Flags were removed)

      The biggest impediment is the overwhelmingly Republican Alabama government, which, led by Governor Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall, promoted a state law protecting confederate symbols, imposing $25,000 fines on municipalities that dare to change or destroy them.

     That protection covers the big monument and much lesser reminders of the city's onetime position as capitol of the confederacy, like the sign name recently changed by the city...from Jeff Davis Avenue to Fred Gray Avenue, from the confederacy's president to longtime Civil Rights lawyer Gray.
 

     The city is considering whether to simply pay the fine or go to court against what they see as an "unjust law".

     Also coming up: the renaming of three schools with confedrate-linked names, generating another $75,000 in potential fines.

     All of that's laid out in the Kay Ivey confederate protection law,  the "unjust law"backed up by AG Marshall. It was signed by Ivey five years ago, a fact she bragged about in a campaign commercial.

     A 2019 report by The Southern Poverty Law Center listed the confederate memorials across the country.