‘History has a place’: Who should decide if Confederate monuments stand in Fort Mill?
Calls continue to come for Fort Mill to address its past. Yet the final answer will have to come from Columbia.
Confederate Park downtown already has been the focus of protests, petitions and pleas for change in the weeks since George Floyd died in Minneapolis, Minn. while in police custody.
Confederate Park is a quarter-acre, town-owned site at Main and Confederate streets. It’s about 400 feet from the town police department and former town hall. Restaurants and retail sit to one side of the park, including a restaurant lawn immediately east of the iconic bandstand.
Along with the bandstand, Confederate Park has two cannons with early 1860s dates inscribed at the ends of their barrels. There are four monuments. There’s one monument that honors Confederate veterans and women, and one that honors “faithful slaves,” plus one honoring the Catawba Indians. The Catawba statue lists the tribe as “ever friends of the white settler” who “aided and fought with the Americans in the Revolution and the Confederates in the Civil War.”
A change.org petition to remove all Confederate monuments from the Fort Mill park had almost 2,800 signatures as of mid-day Wednesday. A separate petition with a little more than 100 signatures called for Fort Mill Town Council to rename the park.
Protesters gathered June 7 at Confederate Park with social distancing masks and signs denouncing racism. Another demonstration followed June 15.
Chair of the York County Democratic Party John Kraljevich attended Monday’s demonstration, which featured about two dozen people, calling for the repeal the South Carolina Heritage Act, he said.
The Heritage Act states that local government officials cannot change the names of parks or remove monuments dedicated to any war, historic figure or event without a two-thirds favorable vote from both the state House and Senate.
“In all of the sort of recent rallies or the vast majority of these are people who are dually enthusiastic about being in the process and having their voices heard,” Kraljevich said. “There’s a lot of young people. It’s really encouraging.
“With the Heritage Act, Fort Mill has no say so. Basically a legislator from Oconee County has more say so than the mayor of Fort Mill, which just isn’t right from a governmental perspective.”
Kraljevich spoke at Monday’s demonstration, informing the crowd on details of the Heritage Act. The group, which included white and Black individuals, sat among the monuments in the park, he said.
“These aren’t people who mean anyone any harm,” Kraljevich said. “These are people who have a perspective that they want to be heard. And ultimately, those monuments represent exactly one person’s perspective — the guy who exactly paid to put them up....”
On June 14, a group known as End White Supremacy Fort Mill posted an article on medium.com detailing what it calls the town’s “leading role in the long history of white supremacy.” The article describes Confederate Park and monuments there, but also street names like Confederate and others named for early town leaders. The article lists local ties to the Ku Klux Klan and state minority voter suppression efforts.
The Herald spoke with a representative of End White Supremacy Fort Mill on Wednesday afternoon, who said the small and local group wants to remain anonymous but will push for elected officials and town business leaders to address Confederate Park and other indicators of a racist past. As a general policy, The Herald does not quote anonymous sources.
In 2017, the Herald spoke with people who trace their family heritage to some of the slaves whose names are inscribed on the Confederate Park monument. Those descendants said then they believed that statue should remain in place.
Fort Mill Mayor Guynn Savage said Thursday morning the town has received considerable input, much of it via email, related to Confederate Park and the monuments.
“Currently, we’re doing a lot of listening,” Savage said. “It’s an issue that deserves a higher level of listening — from all perspectives.”
Savage said as a town, leaders believe they should listen to all comments and review policies to ensure the town operates with fairness and compassion.
“There have been calls that have asked for the removal of the statues in the park and to change the name, and calls to leave the park intact as a nod to history and the heritage of the families listed there,” Savage said.
What elected officials say
S.C. Sen. Greg Gregory, R-Lancaster, is one of maybe a dozen legislators still around who voted on the Heritage Act. He said he doesn’t see himself voting to change it. Gregory chose not to seek re-election in his district which serves York and Lancaster counties.
“It’s pretty much a certainty that it won’t be addressed this year,” Gregory said. He said the few weeks state legislators can meet with COVID-19 social distancing measures will be devoted to the state budget.
“You’re talking about a debate that will last one to two years to change the Heritage Act, if it is changed.”
Gregory said the multi-year flag debate that led to the Heritage Act was as contentious as any he recalls.
“I thought at the time that the Heritage Act was a good compromise,” he said. “But that’s not to say it couldn’t be modified. I would not be in favor of repealing it, because it was a deal that was made over a very long debate....I would not be interested in watering it down at the state level.”
However, Gregory said he could support giving local municipalities more power to decide about their own monuments.
State Rep. John King, D-Rock Hill, is the sole African-American member of the York County Legislative Delegation. King filed a bill in 2017, that remains active but has never been approved. That bill would abolish the Heritage Act.
“This was an issue years ago, it is an issue now, and years ago I pushed to have the Heritage Act repealed so that communities and the people of this state can act on removing Confederate monuments and other references to people who were not heroes, but oppressors,” King said. “I did not wait for more acts of racism in our state and nation to fester to try and have these names and monuments removed. We needed to do it before, and we need to do it now.”
The South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, of which King is a member, issued a statement Wednesday demanding that the Heritage Act be repealed.
King said he fully supports the efforts of more than 4,000 people who have signed a petition to change the name of Rock Hill’s Confederate Park to a name such as Friendship Park, which would honor the Friendship Nine civil rights heroes.
King also said he supports the students and administration at Winthrop University who would like to pursue dropping the name of Ben Tillman, an admitted racist, from a campus building and hall.
“Every day as a black person in South Carolina, I wake up like so many millions of others to these monuments and statues and buildings that praise racism,” King said. “These things remind me and every person of color in this state of how our ancestors were treated. Our ancestors were not treated as human beings.”
King said he does not want history erased, but the monuments continue to highlight those who believed in the inferiority and subjugation of black people in South Carolina.
State Rep. Bruce Bryant, R-Lake Wylie, said Wednesday morning he hasn’t had anyone contact him about changing monuments. He expects legislators will hear more about it in meetings to come.
”That’s the big thing going on in America right now, people wanting to take down all the monuments,” Bryant said. “I’m sure it will be something that will be discussed.”
Bryant said he intends to listen first when debate starts. Yet Bryant sees a difference in statehouse grounds monuments and those in local towns.
“The towns, they’re the ones that has provided all the upkeep,” he said. “It’s on town property. When it was the Confederate flag on state property, the state legislature had that say. I think that it’s something that’s really going to be a hot topic when we go back into session.”
Bryant said he believes bringing down statues isn’t always the answer. Nor does he believe every statue tied in some way to racism should come down, noting there have been conversations about the Washington Monument and others.
“History has a place,” Bryant said. “Was it more important when we look at the Washington Monument? What’s the first thing on our mind? Do we look at it and say, ‘he owned slaves’?. No. We look at it and say he was the first president. Monuments are just like a book. It’s reading history.”
Unlike the state flag controversy where moving the flag to a museum was an option, plenty of small towns across the state don’t have places to relocate monuments. Nor the funds to do it, Bryant said.
State Rep. Raye Felder, R-Fort Mill, said she has had conversations on both sides of the monument debate.
“I do want to be a voice to help craft a solution,” Felder said. “Our community is a special place and only by working together can we accomplish that.”
Felder said she also wants continued feedback from her constituents.
Gregory said there are complicated issues. In some smaller areas a great majority of people can trace their lineage to soldiers who fought for the confederacy.
“It does represent something more than slavery and oppression,” he said.
There are situations, he said, where history is clear enough to warrant change. He cited Tillman, a “notorious racist” whose name still adorns buildings at Winthrop and Clemson universities. Gregory said he would vote to remove a Tillman statue from the statehouse grounds, and his name from the universities.
“I don’t know anything redeeming about Ben Tillman,” Gregory said.
Legislators say if change is to come at Confederate Park or elsewhere, it needs to happen through political decision lest it generate resentment.
“Changes to monuments need to be done through the political process, through statute or ordinance,” Gregory said. “Anything outside of that is anarchy and just subject to one person’s feeling on what is right. And that’s not the way things are done in a democracy.”
Confederate Park
Savage said few people in Fort Mill know much about the state act that determines whether names and monuments can change.
“Unfortunately, as a municipality in the State of South Carolina we are held to the law described as the Heritage Act,” Savage said.
Savage said as with any issue, she supports local decision making.
“I always support local control,” she said. “I think every community knows its needs more than anyone else would.”
Which brings Savage back to listening.
“The town will continue to listen and study,” Savage said. “We dedicate our work to first ensure the health and safety of our town and to preserve the sense of community that sets us apart.”
If laws were to change and Fort Mill were able to make its own decision on Confederate Park, the mayor said she would want to hear creative ideas and whatever spectrum of opinions exists. She would want to hear from residents old and new, of varied backgrounds.
“In the meantime,” Savage said, “we have to follow the law.”
Molly Anderson is 19. She and twin sister Rachel organized the most recent Confederate Park protest.
“It’s not acceptable at all to have Confederate monuments in downtown Fort Mill,” said Molly Anderson. “It sends a very bad message. ...It’s certainly not something that’s new to Fort Mill. It’s not something that just appeared last week. It’s been in the works for well over 100 years.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen, but the sheer internationality of this particular movement is something that’s going to remembered. People are in this for the long-haul this time around. I know I am.”
This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 9:55 AM with the headline "‘History has a place’: Who should decide if Confederate monuments stand in Fort Mill?."
