Sons of Confederate Veterans unveil new monument in Spanish Fort [View all]

It was Monday, state offices were closed in observance of Jefferson Davis’ birthday and the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report noting more than 1,700 monuments, place names and other symbols honoring the Confederacy remain in public spaces.

In Spanish Fort, A.J. DuPree, memorials chairman for the Raphael Semmes Camp 11 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, proudly showed a reporter their latest monument. Just two days earlier, Camp 11 dedicated a 9-foot-tall marble and granite statue of a Confederate soldier at Fort McDermott. While technically not a “public space,” Fort McDermott is owned by Camp 11 but open to the public, and the new, gleaming-white statue flies in the face of a recent nationwide movement to remove such monuments.

The SPLC’s report also noted 110 publicly supported monuments and other tributes to the Confederacy have been removed since the 2015 church massacre by an avowed white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina.

DuPree emphasized the new statue is a “veteran’s memorial” — not depicting a specific individual but rather “dedicated to the Confederate soldier.” The two-piece monument weighs a combined 6,300 pounds and, with rifle in hand, gazes east toward Spanish Main Street. Behind it rises the earthen parapets of the horseshoe-shaped fort, the highest point on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay. Camp 11 acquired and improved the property in 2010 and built the statue using private donations.

Read more: https://lagniappemobile.com/sons-of-confederate-veterans-unveil-new-monument/