GEORGETOWN, Texas -- The debate continues over whether or not to remove the Confederate monument outside of the Williamson County Courthouse.
- Public forum held to discuss Confederate monument
- Some believe it doesn't belong in the 21st Century
- Some say it honors soldiers
“As a historian there are things that need to be preserved, I don’t think politics should be involved or have anything to do with our history,” activist Kenneth Witherspoon said.
The Williamson County Courthouse has been home to the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument since 1916. Some activists say it doesn’t belong in the 21st Century.
“This statue doesn’t belong in any century, their role is to erase history. If you talk about how great the Confederacy was, then you are erasing and denying the fact that it was a slave state that was created specifically for the purpose of sustaining slavery they were extremely explicit about it,” Professor Bryan Register said.
Last summer, commissioners in Williamson County struck down a proposal to add a plaque to the monument talking about the role of slavery in the Civil War. Some argue slavery isn’t the focus of that monument.
“When Texas seceded, soldiers answered the call and went and died. That is the way I view the statue. Everything else is what we put on it, it has nothing to do with the honoring of those soldiers,” Witherspoon said.
But honoring those soldiers, for some, is another problem.
“The trouble is that you’re memorializing the soldiers specifically for being soldiers for the Confederacy. You shouldn’t honor them specifically for the one thing in their life that you know they shouldn’t have done. Honoring them for their Confederate service is honoring the Confederacy,” Register said.
