It looks like the end is at hand for one of the oldest and most recognizable monuments in San Antonio, the towering granite memorial to Confederate soldiers which has stood in Travis Park downtown for more than a century, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Downtown Councilman Roberto Trevino says there is 'support' on City Council to move forward with a plan to dismantle and move the monument to a place to be determined.
"Our public spaces should not be dedicated to symbols of power that honor an ideology which regarded black Americans as property," Trevino said.
The 40 foot tall granite shaft survived a move to purge society of Confederate monuments back in 2015, a movement sparked by the massacre of nine African American parishioners in Charleston South Carolina by a rebel flag waving white supremacist, for two reasons.
First of all, the San Antonio memorial, unlike, for example, the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis which was removed from the Mall of the University of Texas following much debate, does not honor any specific individual. The figure on top of the shaft is a symbolic 'Confederate soldier,' and no individuals are mentioned in the engravings on the shaft.
Secondly, then Mayor Ivy Taylor blocked a move to discuss the fate of the monument, with, ironically, the city's first African American mayor saying such a move would be 'divisive.'
Trevino says he has no plans to destroy the statue, simply move it to a place decided on by city residents.
"We look forward to working with the community and City Council on a comprehensive relocation plan for the statue," he said.
The monument was dedicated in 1899 after being built using $5,000 in donations raised by the Barnard Bee Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In addition to the statue on top, the square granite shaft includes a 'Stars and Bars' Confederate battle flag, and slogans including 'Lest We Forget,' 'Our Cause is With God,' and the major dedication 'Our Confederate Dead.' The figure of the soldier on top points skyward, and holds a rifle at his side.
The erection of the statue 34 years after the end of the Civil War came, as did most of the Confederate monuments and memorials that stand today, as part of what came to be known as 'The Lost Cause.' That was an attempt, well after the end of the war, to explain the military defeat and the poverty of the South in the years after reconstruction, as 'the Confederacy's cause as noble and its leadership as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry and honor, defeated by the Union armies through numerical advantage and industrial force that overwhelmed the South's superior military skill and courage,' according to Yale University historian Rolin Osterweis.
The 'Lost Cause' generally airbrushed out the talk of slavery, white supremacy, and treason which marked the Confederate movement during the Civil War.