A judge in the United States is expected to hear arguments this week in a legal fight over a Confederate monument that has stood for 116 years in Tuskegee, an Alabama town inhabited primarily by black people.
Circuit Judge Steven Perryman has set a hearing for Thursday in a lawsuit brought on behalf of Macon County and some residents against state and local chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which erected dozens of rebel monuments. throughout the south of the country at the beginning of the 20th century to those who opposed the eradication of slavery.
The lawsuit, filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray, alleges that Macon County improperly gave the Confederate group a plaza for the statue and a whites-only park in 1906.
A decision in favor of the county could lead to the removal of the monument, which features a statue of a Confederate soldier and has been the subject of protests for decades.
But the Daughters maintain that they legally own the 2-acre plot and that it is open to all. An attorney for the group said its members want the monument to remain and have asked the judge to dismiss the county’s lawsuit, which was filed last year.
In a court order, Perryman said he will consider the Confederate group’s request to dismiss the case and other motions during the hearing.
The monument was erected as white supremacist and pro-Confederate groups reigned throughout the South and erected Civil War memorials to honor rebel troops and portray the cause of the slaveholding South as noble.
Hundreds of monuments have been torn down in recent years because they came to be seen as symbols of racial oppression against Black people.