Dallas Confederate Monument: City Council Votes For Removal

Dallas City Council voted Wednesday to remove the Confederate War Memorial from Pioneer Park Cemetery.

In an 11-4 vote, after enthusiastic speeches from African-American members of the city council, there were only four members who supported an alternate plan to add a new display about slavery and Civil War to put the monument into context. The council declared the monument of Confederate soldiers a “noncontributing structure for the historic overlay district.”

Jennifer Gates, Rickey Callahan, Adam McGough and Sandy Greyson voted against removing the monument. They were initially supported by Mayor Mike Rawlings but he changed sides after it became obvious that majority of the people wanted its removed.

However, the removal process of the statue still isn't complete as the Dallas Landmark Commission has to review and approve it. Since the monument and its location were both historic, the plan could be appealed to the Dallas Plan Commission that might bring the monumental issue back to the city council for a final decision. This might take several months or drag past the city elections in May, which means new members of the city council could vote differently. However, people believe the strong majority vote of Wednesday makes it unlikely.

The workers tasked with the process told council members that in order to remove and store the monument it would have to be sawed into pieces. A budget of around $48,000 was allotted to the disassembly and removal of the monument. Artist Lauren Wood, who has experience in the restoration and removal of monuments, was recruited by the city staff to consider a project that would “re-envision” the monument site in a new context.

In September 2017, the city council made a decision to remove and store the Robert E. Lee Confederate monument located in Lee Park. The statue was removed a couple of weeks after the decision but it is still in storage. Council made the decision following several protests, both against white supremacy and for the Lee statue, were staged in 2017.

Mayor Rawlings released a document in 2017 stating a task force removing the Robert E. Lee statue should be preserved and placed in a museum or educational site in North Texas with proper context of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the “Lost Cause” mythology and the “Jim Crow” era.

The podium where the statue stood earlier was renamed Oak Lawn Park on Sept. 22, 2017. The task force recommended placeholder names of historical abolitionists, enslaves or human rights leaders be used instead of the names of city parks with Confederate names.