Remove Gwinnett's Confederate Statue

The Civil War ended 155 years ago. The Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. Our public entities should no longer play a role in distorting history by honoring a secessionist government that waged war against the United States to preserve white supremacy and the enslavement of millions of people. It is time for Gwinnett County to bury the myth of the Lost Cause once and for all and remove the monument from the Lawrenceville Square.

In Gwinnett, there is a Confederate "Lost Cause" monument has been divisive to the Gwinnett community for years. Some will claim the statue is about heritage. However, for many others the statue is a symbol of past and present racism in the American south. Calls to remove it have once again come to the forefront when community activist and former Congressional candidate Nabilah Islam demanded the statue come down on June 18th. Now is the time for our county leaders to remove or relocate this statue.

This statue is not just stone and metal. It is not just an innocent remembrance of benign history. This monument purposely celebrates a fictional, sanitized Confederacy, ignoring the death, enslavement and terror it actually stood for. This statue was erected in 1993, over 100 years after the Civil War ended, specifically as a reminder to Gwinnett’s African American community that white supremacy is still a pervasive part of southern culture.

We must recognize that we can not change policing in America until we change the culture of America, and the culture of America has been deeply steeped in white supremacist celebration and racist norms, of which Confederate monuments are the most visible symbols. The point of removing the monuments is to move from the symbolism of racism to the substance of racism.

The Historic Courthouse and its grounds where the memorial is located are the property of Gwinnett County, despite being at the center of Lawrenceville. Any decisions made on the monument would be decided at the county level by the Gwinnett Board of Commissioners.

In place of where the statue currently stands, the Board of Commissioners should erect a new monument acknowledging Lawrenceville's history of lynchings and honoring the lives lost from racial violence.

If you agree, please sign this petition today.