Politics

Some Examples of Confederate Tributes Around the South

Published

9 years ago

June 24, 2015

The Mississippi flag hangs, with the other state flags, in the subway between the U.S. Capitol and Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, Tuesday, June 23, 2015. In the wake of a massacre at a black church in Charleston, S.C., a bipartisan mix of officials across the country is calling for the removal of Confederate flags and other symbols of the Confederacy. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

The Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — Tributes to the Confederacy and the Jim Crow era that have existed still abound in the Deep South and beyond more than a century after the end of the Civil War.

Here are some of the most high-profile displays, including several that are being criticized anew following the fatal shooting of nine parishioners at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina:

— ALABAMA: An 88 -foot-tall Confederate memorial sits at the Capitol entrance nearest the governor’s office. It features four different Confederate banners, including the battle flag. Jefferson Davis, the lone president of the Confederacy, is said to have laid the cornerstone at a ceremony in 1886. Two nearby public high schools, now with nearly all-black student bodies, are named for Davis and Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate forces.

— ARKANSAS: There are two Confederate monuments on the Capitol grounds, one honoring Confederate women, the other soldiers.

— FLORIDA: No confederate flag flies at the Florida Capitol, but the state flag, whose main design was adopted in 1900, features a St. Andrew’s Cross — an ‘X’ emblazoned across the banner. The imagery is similar to the Battle Flag, though it also reflects a flag of the Spanish empire when it ruled Florida from the early 16th century until 1763. Several county courthouses and local public squares or parks feature Confederate veterans monuments.

— GEORGIA: The Capitol and surrounding grounds feature multiple statues, busts and portraits of Confederate war heroes and segregationist politicians. In the Capitol rotunda is a portrait of Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy. A bust of Stephens sits just outside the rotunda. The Georgia state flag, a compromise version that replaced a design with the battle flag, is modeled after the “Stars and Bars,” the first national flag of the Confederacy. Twenty miles from the Capitol is Stone Mountain, which features a massive carving of Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, all on horseback.

— KENTUCKY: Jefferson Davis is among the statues included in the Capitol rotunda. The Davis statue is situated behind the Abraham Lincoln statute that sits in the rotunda’s center, so that the president of the Confederacy appears to be looking over the shoulder of the 16th U.S. president who governed during the Civil War.

— LOUISIANA: A statue of Robert E. Lee sits at the center of Lee Circle, a major traffic circle connecting downtown New Orleans to the Garden District neighborhood. Another city thoroughfare is named for Jefferson Davis and includes a statue of the Confederate president.

— MISSISSIPPI: The state flag is the last U.S. state banner to include an explicit image of the Confederate battle flag. At one Capitol entrance sits a monument to the women of the Confederacy. The University of Mississippi’s athletics teams are knowns as the “Ole Miss Rebels,” and the school’s band often plays “Dixie” at sporting events.

— NORTH CAROLINA: An obelisk memorial to the state’s Confederate war dead and a monument to the “North Carolina Women of the Confederacy” are located on the old Capitol grounds in Raleigh. The Capitol square also includes statues of Civil War-era Gov. Zebulon Vance and Gov. Charles Aycock, known partly for his anti-black rhetoric at the end of the 19th century.

— SOUTH CAROLINA: The Confederate battle flag flies at the base of a Confederate monument in front of the Capitol. It flies between a Confederate monument and a statue of Benjamin Tillman, a noted white supremacist who spent three decades — from 1890 to 1918 — as governor and U.S. senator. Behind the Capitol is a statue of Strom Thurmond, a long-serving U.S. senator who ran for president in 1948 as a “Dixiecrat” to protest the national Democratic Party’s softening stance on segregation.

— TENNESSEE: A bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, an early Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, is inside the Capitol.

— VIRGINIA: Arlington National Cemetery, formerly the plantation of Robert E. Lee, includes a Confederate section with almost 500 graves surrounding a memorial. Future President William Howard Taft authorized the memorial in 1906, when he served as secretary of war for President Theodore Roosevelt.

___

Compiled by Bill Barrow in Atlanta; Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; and Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Cornel West on Obama: ‘The First Black President Has Become The First Niggerized Black President’

Don't Miss

What This Cruel War Was Over

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of April 24 – 30, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 24 – 30, 2024

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2024

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Bay Area

MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

Published

1 week ago

April 20, 2024

Oakland Post

Mayor London Breed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Contact: Mayor’s Office of Communications, mayorspressoffice@sfgov.org

***PRESS RELEASE***

MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

HUD’s Continuum of Care grant will support the City’s range of critical services and programs, including permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and improved access to housing for survivors of domestic violence

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

HUD’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program is designed to support local programs with the goal of ending homelessness for individuals, families, and Transitional Age Youth.

This funding supports the city’s ongoing efforts that have helped more than 15,000 people exit homelessness since 2018 through City programs including direct housing placements and relocation assistance. During that time San Francisco has also increased housing slots by 50%. San Francisco has the most permanent supportive housing of any county in the Bay Area, and the second most slots per capita than any city in the country.

“In San Francisco, we have worked aggressively to increase housing, shelter, and services for people experiencing homelessness, and we are building on these efforts every day,” said Mayor London Breed. “Every day our encampment outreach workers are going out to bring people indoors and our City workers are connecting people to housing and shelter. This support from the federal government is critical and will allow us to serve people in need and address encampments in our neighborhoods.”

The funding towards supporting the renewal projects in San Francisco include financial support for a mix of permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and transitional housing projects. In addition, the CoC award will support Coordinated Entry projects to centralize the City’s various efforts to address homelessness. This includes $2.1 million in funding for the Coordinated Entry system to improve access to housing for youth and survivors of domestic violence.

“This is a good day for San Francisco,” said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “HUD’s Continuum of Care funding provides vital resources to a diversity of programs and projects that have helped people to stabilize in our community. This funding is a testament to our work and the work of our nonprofit partners.”

The 2024 Continuum of Care Renewal Awards Include:

$42.2 million for 29 renewal PSH projects that serve chronically homeless, veterans, and youth
$318,000 for one new PSH project, which will provide 98 affordable homes for low-income seniors in the Richmond District
$445,00 for one Transitional Housing (TH) project serving youth
$6.4 million dedicated to four Rapid Rehousing (RRH) projects that serve families, youth, and survivors of domestic violence
$750,00 for two Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) projects
$2.1 million for three Coordinated Entry projects that serve families, youth, chronically homeless, and survivors of domestic violence

In addition, the 2023 CoC Planning Grant, now increased to $1,500,000 from $1,250,000, was also approved. Planning grants are submitted non-competitively and may be used to carry out the duties of operating a CoC, such as system evaluation and planning, monitoring, project and system performance improvement, providing trainings, partner collaborations, and conducting the PIT Count.

“We are very appreciative of HUD’s support in fulfilling our funding request for these critically important projects for San Francisco that help so many people trying to exit homelessness,” said Del Seymour, co-chair of the Local Homeless Coordinating Board. “This funding will make a real difference to people seeking services and support in their journey out of homelessness.”

In comparison to last year’s competition, this represents a $770,000 increase in funding, due to a new PSH project that was funded, an increase in some unit type Fair Market Rents (FMRs) and the larger CoC Planning Grant. In a year where more projects had to compete nationally against other communities, this represents a significant increase.

Nationally, HUD awarded nearly $3.16 billion for over 7,000 local homeless housing and service programs including new projects and renewals across the United States.