The South has lost again

We used to say, “What a difference a year makes!”

In 2020, we say, “What a difference a few weeks makes!”

If I told you the Alabama legislature was going to weaken the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act this year you would have thought I was crazy, and up until recently you would be right.

In 2017, the legislature passed a bill, and then ran on the bill’s passage in 2018, that would seemingly make it borderline impossible to remove or modify Confederate memorials across the state.

Birmingham would test the bill by boarding up a monument in Linn Park. A court battle later declared that the $25,000 fine was a onetime deal and if Birmingham did something to it, they would just pay the fine and move on.

Obviously, the legislature was not happy with this because that was not the intent of the bill.

There was a lot of discussion about changing the law, but not weakening it, before the coronavirus pandemic threw the legislative session into disarray.

There was talk of making the penalty provision of the law a daily fine by clearing up the wording. Some internal talk included making the fine as “little” as $5,000 daily, but that would still deter movement of monuments or rack up huge fines that would never be paid.

Enter the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and all the protests that followed.

The Confederate monuments had nothing to do with that, as that event took place in a liberal city with a liberal mayor, a liberal governor, a liberal congresswoman and two liberal senators who would probably gladly tell you the word “Dixie” is hate speech.

So obviously, monuments in Mobile, Birmingham, Huntsville and everywhere all need to come down. The media, mobs and politicians all now apparently agree.

Even those who are less enthusiastic about the idea are reluctantly ready to get these things moved so we can move on to fighting about the Washington Monument and Calhoun Community College.

While appearing on WVNN’s “The Dale Jackson Show,” State Senator Sam Givhan (R-Huntsville) intimated that the Alabama legislature is largely over this fight and ready to let some of these monuments get moved to cemeteries or museums, and the law could be changed to reflect that.

Givhan said, “If I were a betting man, I would bet that there’d be some — and I don’t know this — but I would bet that there’d be some allowance to move that’s not there.” This clearly means the momentum has shifted, legislator and local leaders want these things gone and the issue resolved.

Givhan’s home county and city have both taken steps to remove a monument to “THE CONFEDERATE CAUSE” from the Madison County Courthouse steps, but the state’s commission that oversees the approval of these decisions is about to be pretty busy, and Givhan would like to “give the Commission flexibility to be able to deal with [moving these monuments].”

My takeaway:

To put it simply, these Confederate monuments are going to move or be destroyed.

It can be done slowly legally as they are trying to do in Huntsville, or it can be done illegally as was done in Birmingham and Mobile. Either way, it is happening.

Put another “L” in the record books because this battle in the culture war is over.

Listen:

Dale Jackson is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts a talk show from 7-11 AM weekdays on WVNN.