2020.06.18 Dekalb Confederate Monument, Atlanta, Georgia USA
In 1908 the Daughters of the Confederacy sponsored the construction of a thirty-foot obelisk outside the recently-completed DeKalb County Courthouse in Decatur, Georgia. The obelisk commemorated all those who had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. The inscribed placard praised them as those upholding a “covenant keeping race.”
In 2019 the DeKalb County Commissioners sought the monument’s removal but were refuted by a complicated legal process. They opted instead for a contextualizing historical marker next to the monument explaining the monument’s white supremacist purpose.
On June 18, 2020, a county judge ordered the monument’s removal within a week, citing public danger concerns amidst a slew of protests which toppled colonial monuments nationwide. The obelisk was removed by a construction team that same night with crowds of onlookers cheering on.