LOUISVILLE, KY (AP) - A judge has temporarily barred the city of Louisville from removing a 70-foot-tall Confederate monument from the University of Louisville campus.

 

Jefferson Circuit Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman signed a restraining order Monday morning forbidding the city from moving the 121-year-old obelisk honoring Kentuckians who died fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

 

Mayor Greg Fischer and University President James Ramsey announced Friday that they would remove the monument, marking the latest government to reconsider its display of Confederate symbols following the massacre of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina last summer.

 

 

Judge temporarily blocks removal of Confederate monument - WPSD Local 6: Your news, weather, and sports authority

Should it stay or should it go?

Stay

Stay. I don't think the flags should be flown at/over government offices, but tearing down statues is where I draw the line. It happened; it shouldn't be honored, but there should be education and information.

Stay.

It's part of our history. Who we were as a nation at the time. To deny the history is to not learn lessons from it, good and bad.

Stay.

Why?

Because they shouldnt bow to a guy who writes an article about how it should be took away.

If the reasoning behind taking it down is because of the South Carolina massacre then keep it up. Don't get all PC over racism now.

I don't really care one way or another. A few things....it is LITERALLY in the middle of the street. I don't personally consider that UL's campus...the street wad there long before the campus grew around it.

 

I may be obtuse, but I never knew it was a confederate monument. I thought it was a civil war monument. Maybe it's semantics, but that's what my parents told me it was when I was a little girl, and I never, ever knew it was a monument to honor the confederacy. I thought it was for all civil war soldiers.

 

And lastly, it the do move it, I hope they put something iconic in its place. I hear they want to use the space for a turning lane for the Speed museum, so I guess we'll lose a quirky statue in the middle of the street.

Only in America are we still compelled to honor traitors out of some misguided sense of allegiance to the past. Tear the thing down and in its place put up a monument to people who died to preserve the union and abolish slavery rather than those in favor of disunion and chains.

 

Is the whitewashing of history a good thing? Absolutely not, but by the propagation of this romantic vision of the old confederacy with its "lost cause" narrative emblazoned on monuments, that's exactly what we're doing. Leaving this monument up is an absolute whitewashing of history. Tearing it down for good would be a powerful reminder to a new generation of Americans that there was no place in a free nation for slave labor, economic injustice, and radical segregation.

 

Get rid of the thing and let the history books finally remember the rebellion for what it was: the last gasp of the Southern landed elite trying to preserve their fortunes on the backs of free, forced labor in an age long past and gratefully forgotten.

I don't care what they do with the monument. But if it's finally to the point that reverence for the Confederacy is seen as a blight on the city or the campus then they should go ahead and remove it. Getslow's post is exactly right about the legacy of the Confederacy and it is incredible that it has taken until 2016 for these sentiments to finally supplant the revisionism that seems to have become conventional wisdom over the last century.

I heard that the newly renovated Speed Museum wants to remove it so land will be freed up to improve road access to the Museum. I also read that the politicians don't really know who owns the land that the monument is on.

Move it to the Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site. I don't have a problem with Confederate monuments in historic settings.

Only in America are we still compelled to honor traitors out of some misguided sense of allegiance to the past. Tear the thing down and in its place put up a monument to people who died to preserve the union and abolish slavery rather than those in favor of disunion and chains.

 

Is the whitewashing of history a good thing? Absolutely not, but by the propagation of this romantic vision of the old confederacy with its "lost cause" narrative emblazoned on monuments, that's exactly what we're doing. Leaving this monument up is an absolute whitewashing of history. Tearing it down for good would be a powerful reminder to a new generation of Americans that there was no place in a free nation for slave labor, economic injustice, and radical segregation.

 

Get rid of the thing and let the history books finally remember the rebellion for what it was: the last gasp of the Southern landed elite trying to preserve their fortunes on the backs of free, forced labor in an age long past and gratefully forgotten.

 

#statesrights

I don't care what they do with the monument. But if it's finally to the point that reverence for the Confederacy is seen as a blight on the city or the campus then they should go ahead and remove it. Getslow's post is exactly right about the legacy of the Confederacy and it is incredible that it has taken until 2016 for these sentiments to finally supplant the revisionism that seems to have become conventional wisdom over the last century.

 

Slow and steady wins the race.