Hundreds of protesters face off in Houston over Confederate statue

"Big Texas" dressed up to participate the Black Lives Matter protest against Spirit of the Confederacy statue at Sam Houston Park Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017, in Houston. "Big Texas" dressed up to participate the Black Lives Matter protest against Spirit of the Confederacy statue at Sam Houston Park Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017, in Houston. Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 90 Caption Close Hundreds of protesters face off in Houston over Confederate statue 1 / 90 Back to Gallery

As 40,000 protesters poured into the streets across the country in Boston, a more sedate rally played out in Houston with several hundred protesters squared off downtown over a controversial Confederate monument in Sam Houston Park.

More than 400 socialists, liberals and Black Lives Matter activists showed up to demand the monument's removal, while a few dozen counter-protesters — some carrying Confederate flags — showed up in opposition. In between, scores of baton-wielding police corralled crowds with barricades and officers on horseback.

No arrests or altercations were reported, though several protesters became sick from the heat, police said.

One man protesting Confederate statues showed up wearing a faux KKK robe made from a sheet. A lifelong Houstonian brought along a "Resist" sheet cake, referencing a recent Tina Fey skit on "Saturday Night Live." A few on both sides carried guns.

For nearly three hours, left-leaning protesters gave speeches, chanted and cheered while their counterparts across the barricades shouted and waved flags.

While the park's Confederate statue, the Spirit of the Confederacy, was at the center of the event, protesters said it's only a symbol of greater racial tension.

"It's deeper than statues," said Ashton Woods, Black Lives Matters organizer. "The statue is a symbolic gesture on both sides. It was erected to intimidate people who look like me."

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Houston's black leaders, such as Sylvester Turner, are forced to work "in the shadow of a Confederate statue," he noted.

Counter-protesters lamented what they called an effort to obliterate the past.

"I don't like what happened, but you can't keep going back and trying to erase history," said Michael Gowling, who supports the statue that sits in a quiet area of the downtown park.

But Tony Wilson, an activist with Houston Socialist Movement, was adamant that's not what's happening.

"We're not trying to erase history, but I believe those monuments are symbols of oppression and they should come down."

Protesters weren't allowed inside Sam Houston Park, which had been closed to the public for a wedding.

The bride and groom, a Brit and a Texan, had planned the ceremony for 3 p.m., but the protest forced them to wed two hours earlier.

Women in heels and men in summer suits snuck out of the park just before 2 p.m. to be whisked around the barricades in police vans.

"At least no one interrupted," said Philip Birdwood, the bride's brother.

While hundreds of neo-Nazis and white supremacists had rallied in Charlottesville, VA, there were practically none to be seen in Houston's searing Saturday afternoon heat.

From Gray Matters: Houston, we need to talk about those Confederate statues

More than a dozen men and women with long guns, body armor and fatigues showed up to support security at the event.

"We're here to support our law enforcement officers," said Laura Lee, a woman with the group. "So they know we have their backs."

She likened the prospect of removing Confederate-celebrating statues with a slippery slope that would lead to removing statues or plaques celebrating the history of Founding Fathers like George Washington.

"As painful as it is, it's not going to change what happened," she said.

When one man wearing a T-shirt with a swastika arrived at the protest by skateboard, the rifle-wielding counter-protesters immediately surrounded him until police could shoo him away.

Brad, a 37-year-old from Spring Branch who was among the counter-protesters who wouldn't give their full names, spent much of the protest draped in the Texas flag. He said Confederate General Robert E. Lee been a benevolent slave owner who educated his slaves, and incorrectly asserted that Abraham Lincoln had also owned slaves.

"The real statues that need to be torn down are the Union statues (of Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant)," he said. "We have checks and balances. Lincoln is the only president to overstep his boundaries and murder his own people. He's more like Hitler."

Another counterprotester identified himself as "General Lee" — but said he was descended from relatives who had fought for the Union Army.

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"They want to tear down an angel," he said, his voice muffled by a yellow "Don't Tread on Me" bandanna he wore across his face to hid his identity. "That doesn't seem right to me."

The warring rallies cap off a racially fraught week in Houston and across the country.

Last Saturday, 32-year-old Heather Heyer died after a reported Nazi sympathizer allegedly plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters opposing a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Afterward, the president drew harsh criticism for a statement placing blame on "many sides." He later came out to denounce the KKK and neo-Nazis but walked back his comments the following day when the said white nationalist protesters included "some very fine people."

The chaos in Charlottesville sparked renewed interest nationwide in whether Confederate statues should be taken down.

Two days after the Virginia violence, activists tore down a Confederate statue, and this week activists in Houston started circulating a petition calling for the removal of Bayou City monuments to the Confederacy.

Vandals also doused Bell Park's Christopher Columbus statue with red paint and tossed white paint over a Martin Luther King Jr. statue in the Sunnyside community.

"We typically see things like this once or twice a year, but I'm expecting we're going to see this happen a lot more often in the next couple of weeks," restorer Bob Pringle said as his crew cleaned the Bell Park statue. "It's unfortunate. This is not the kind of work you enjoy."

Demarco Emmons, from Houston, supported removing the statue, which he considers a representation of a false historical narrative. Any symbol that glorifies the era, he said, fails to consider minorities who suffered.

"It celebrates a very negative institution," he said.

Staff writer Katherine Blunt contributed to this report.