Birmingham mayor defiant after boarding up Confederate monument
'Birmingham is a civil rights city and not a Civil War city,' says Mayor William Bell
The mayor of Birmingham, Ala., says he's not backing down from his decision to board up a monument erected by the descendants of Confederate soldiers, even as the state's attorney general sues his city for the move.
Mayor William A. Bell Sr. says the 15-metre-tall obelisk dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1905 doesn't tell the correct story of his city.
"What you also have to understand is that Birmingham is a civil rights city and not a Civil War city. We were formed after the Civil War ended, in 1871, so we have no connection with the Civil War," he told host Chris Hall in an interview with CBC Radio's The House.
In the early 1960s, Birmingham was at the centre of protests led by Martin Luther King Jr. demanding an end to racial segregation. Scenes of police attacking black men, women and children with pressure hoses and dogs became iconic images of the civil rights movement.
A church bombing in 1963 that killed four black girls in the city was a major event leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act the following year.
Bell said that as a black leader in the city, he has to stand up and speak out as hard-won rights are threatened.
"I was born and raised in a segregated society, and because good men and women came together after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and said we can't have a city that would allow people to be bombed on a Sunday morning ... they began to change our society, to create opportunities for every citizen that lives in the city of Birmingham, and I'm a beneficiary of that."
'The president has failed to lead us'
Bell authorized city crews to cover the downtown monument with wood panels following violent confrontations in Charlottesville, Va., over the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
The mayor said he was disappointed that U.S. President Donald Trump didn't take a stronger stand against the hate groups that were involved in the rally.
"In years past we've had presidents speak out against the Klan and the neo-Nazis and other hate groups. Not just Barack Obama and not just Bill Clinton, but George Bush, both the father and the son, and other presidents down through the years have used a bully pulpit to put those hate groups in their place."
Bell said that in the absence of leadership from the president cities are forced to act.
"Just as mayors spoke out as they related to the Paris accord on climate change and we've spoken out on other issues, this is just one more time that the president has failed to lead us, and we feel that other voices need to be heard from a position of leadership."
Monuments often 'one-sided'
Other cities across the U.S. are acting to remove controversial monuments.
- Historians say removal not the only way to deal with racist relics
- Confederate monuments removed or covered overnight
In Baltimore, city officials removed four Confederate statues this week. In Lexington, Ky., Mayor Jim Gray said on Twitter the events in Charlottesville accelerated his announcement to try to relocate two Confederate monuments in his city.
I am taking action to relocate the Confederate statues. We have thoroughly examined this issue, and heard from many of our citizens.
—@JimGrayLexKYThe tragic events in Charlottesville today have accelerated the announcement I intended to make next week.
—@JimGrayLexKYCecilia Morgan, author of Commemorating Canada: History, Heritage and Memory and a professor of history at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, said monuments represent the particular historical moment in which they were built.
"Often, as many forms of commemorative history do, [monuments] reflect a very emotive, but also one-sided perspective on that history in which other voices and other perspectives on that history have often been silenced in the process of having that monument erected," she said.
Canada has its own controversial monuments that have come under increased scrutiny. This spring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the renaming of Parliament's Langevin Block, named for Hector-Louis Langevin, one of the proponents of the Indian Residential School System.
And just this week, the Hudson's Bay Company removed from one of its stores in downtown Montreal a plaque commemorating Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederate States during the American Civil War.