Montgomery Advertiser

Sen. Gerald Allen, R-Tuscaloosa, misnamed his proposed Alabama Heritage Preservation Act. It should be called the Alabama Hatred Preservation Act.

Now pending before a Senate committee, the bill would make it harder for localities to remove historical monuments on public property. As in monuments honoring the Confederacy.

Or to remove, rename or alter statues, memorials or plaques on public property. As in statues, memorials or plaques honoring the Confederacy.

Or to rename schools, streets, bridges, buildings and parks on public property. As in names of streets, bridges, buildings or parks honoring the Confederacy.

The bill sets up a convoluted, expensive system for municipalities that might wish to remove a Robert E. Lee statue or rename a majority-black high school named for Jefferson Davis.

They would have to petition a legislative committee, hold two months of public hearings and buy newspaper ads to inform area residents of a proposed change. After all that, the committee could simply turn down a city’s request.

If that sounds like a bizarre ploy from a conservative Republican for more big government overreach into what should fall under local control, it is.

Allen coyly claims the bill’s intent isn’t to protect Confederate emblems, but rather to prevent a “whitewash” of history and “protect the historic value of America.”

That’s bogus. The impetus for this bill is a bigoted reaction to the groundswell of approval for removal of offensive Confederate symbols that came after Dylann Roof allegedly murdered nine black people in a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015.

Pictures of Roof posing with the Confederate battle flag and other symbols of hate surfaced. Some states and cities began taking down flags on public property, including Gov. Robert Bentley.

But even an obvious attempt to protect Confederate symbols isn’t enough for Allen. Under his bill, cities who remove them without permission from the legislative committee would be fined $100,000 for each violation.

Seriously? He wants to snatch that chunk of change from Alabama’s cash-strapped localities, making it harder from them to do critical things like repair roads, put police officers on the streets, aid the sick and feed the hungry? In order to preserve monuments that glorify hatred?

How nauseating.

The Southern Poverty Law Center strongly opposes Allen’s bill. SPLC President Richard Cohen has this to say: “As a state, we should not honor the Confederacy because it was formed to preserve slavery, a monstrous institution."

We agree. We also applaud the SPLC for its initiative after the Charleston massacre to catalogue and map Confederate place names and symbols in public spaces around the nation.

Excluding some 2,600 symbols that are largely historical, the nonprofit identified 1,164 emblems, many of them in the South. In a report to be released this month, the SPLC rightly contends that efforts to take down markers honoring the Confederacy “aren’t about erasing history. Rather, they’re about understanding history. It’s about getting history right – about putting historical artifacts in their proper place.”

We recommend Allen read the report and withdraw his shameful bill. Alabama should move toward the day when it no longer publicly reveres white supremacy and the institution of slavery, not pander to the worst of its historical legacy.

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