Alabama Supreme Court: Fence 'alters' Confederate monument in Birmingham

Brian Lyman | Montgomery Advertiser

Show Caption Hide Caption Confederate monuments peaked during Jim Crow & Civil Rights eras After 3 people died in Charlottesville VA last weekend, there has been a call across the country to remove confederate monuments in a growing number of cities. Government officials including House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, are calling for the removal of monuments celebrating controversial Civil War era figures from public spaces . The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that in the 150 years that followed the end of the Civil War hundreds of Confederate monuments where erected in almost every state. Business Insider has created an interesting timeline of the memorials. The timeline reveals an uptick in Confederate installations at the height of Jim Crow, an era defined by segregation and disenfranchisement against African Americans. Confederate installations peaked again in the 1950s and 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement.

The Alabama Supreme Court has sided with the state in a dispute with Birmingham over a Confederate monument that the city blocked with a plywood fence.

In a unanimous opinion, Justice Tommy Bryan wrote that the fence interfered with the 1905 statue’s act of memorializing, thus “altering” the monument in violation of a 2017 law aimed at protecting Confederate memorials.

“Inherent in the definition of a ‘monument’ — indeed inherent in the very purpose of a monument — is that a monument must memorialize something,” Bryan wrote. “The parties agree that the monument in this case was intended as a ‘permanent memorial’ to a group or to military service. However, the monument in its current form — covered by a 12- foot plywood screen around the base — memorializes nothing.”

The monument law forbids the removal of monuments more than 40 years old. Critics said it protected monuments to the Confederacy, erected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to glorify racism and white supremacy.

Birmingham Mayor William Bell ordered the plywood erected around the Sailors and Soldiers Monument in Linn Park in August 2017, blocking dedicatory language on the monument from view. Attorney General Steve Marshall sued, saying it was an “alteration” of the statue forbidden under the law.

In a statement Wednesday, Marshall said the Alabama Supreme Court reached the "correct conclusion."

"The Supreme Court’s ruling is a victory for the Alabama law which seeks to protect historical monuments," the statement said. "The City of Birmingham acted unlawfully when it erected barriers to obstruct the view of the 114-year-old Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Linn Park."

Rick Journey, a spokesman for Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin, said in a statement that the city was "strongly disappointed" in the ruling, which it said was "less about the rule of law and more about politics."

"We are carefully reviewing the opinion to determine our next step, but clearly the citizens of Birmingham should have the final decision about what happens with monuments on Birmingham city grounds," the statement said.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Mike Graffeo ruled the monument law unconstitutional in January, writing that the law — which forbids the removal of monuments more than 40 years old — violated the city of Birmingham’s rights of due process and freedom of speech.

“Just as the state could not force any particular citizen to post a pro-Confederacy sign in his or her front lawn, so too can the state not commandeer the city’s property for the state’s preferred message,” the judge wrote.

More: Judge rules Alabama's monument protection law unconstitutional

Bryan rejected the argument. “The city is merely a ‘political subdivision of the state,’ and having been created ‘by sovereign power in accordance with sovereign will’ as express by the legislature, the City may exercise ‘such power, and only such power, as is conferred upon it by law.”

The justice broke with the state over the issue of fines. The state sought a $25,000 a day fine for violations Bryan wrote that the law only authorized a single $25,000 fine.

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brian Lyman at 334-240-0185 or blyman@gannett.com. Updated at 1:18 p.m. with statement from Marshall and at 3:12 p.m. with statement from Woodfin's office. Updated at 3:16 p.m. to correct that former Birmingham Mayor William Bell ordered the barrier put up.