(StraightNews.org) – The Texan city of Houston is to remove any remaining statues honoring figures from the Confederacy. The City Council voted to eliminate “The Spirit of the Confederacy,” which was taken down in 2020, from the city’s Civic Art Collection. Memorials to Christopher Columbus and Dick Dowling will also be jettisoned.
An official statement from the Council said the movement to take down Confederate monuments is rooted in the aftermath of the “massacre of nine people by a white supremacist” in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner established a task force in 2017 asking what statues and other commemorative items should be removed from public display.
As well as the “The Spirit of the Confederacy,” the group recommended discarding the Dick Dowling statue near Hermann Park and the Christopher Columbus sculpture at Bell Park, which were taken down in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
The pulping of various historical figures from public view across America was expedited following the death in police custody of criminal suspect George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. The incident sparked violent riots across America and the UK, during which the Marxist campaign group Black Lives Matter destroyed property and attacked historical artifacts. Leaders in towns across the US conceded to the protestors’ demands, and several memorials were removed and other changes made.
Some cities had already begun the transition process following the summer of 2015 in South Carolina, where nine black people were shot dead in a church in Charleston by avowed white supremacist Dylann Storm Roof. Roof allegedly told friends and family he intended to kill people and wrote a “manifesto” saying he became “racially aware” after the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. This prompted him to investigate crime and uncover what he believed were exceptionally high numbers of white Americans murdered by their black counterparts.
Roof was sentenced to death in January 2017, but this was downgraded to life in prison without parole months later.
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