Updated Friday at 10:42 a.m.
Friday morning, DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond addressed a crowd in Decatur Square, where a Confederate monument had once stood.
Thurmond told the crowd that the county will add 25 “more inclusive” historic markers. And, as 2022 will mark bicentennial in DeKalb, he’s said he commissioned writers to document a more inclusive history of the county “based on facts and truth.”
Late Thursday, another crowd gathered and cheered as the Confederate monument that has stood on the courthouse square in Decatur since 1908 was brought down minutes before midnight on the eve of Juneteenth — the holiday celebrating the day in 1865 that all enslaved black people learned they had been freed from bondage.
By the time workers separated the top of the stone obelisk from its base, a crowd of onlookers had swelled to more than a hundred.
“We’ve been working hard, marching, emailing who we need to email, and just to see that what we’ve been working for is actually coming to fruition is amazing to me. I’m very happy right now,” said Daxton Pettus, a student and member of the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights, one of the groups that had pushed to have the monument removed.
The “Lost Cause” monument was originally put up by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. A county judge last week declared it a nuisance and told officials it had to be removed.
Last week, DeKalb County Judge Clarence Seeliger’s order said the 30-foot obelisk in Decatur Square should be removed by midnight on June 26 and placed in storage indefinitely.
In a complaint filed last week, the city argued that the monument had become a threat to public safety during recent protests about racism and police brutality.
The judge agreed.
“In short, the Confederate obelisk has become an increasingly frequent target of graffiti and vandalism, a figurative lightning rod for friction among citizens, and a potential catastrophe that could happen at any time if individuals attempt to forcibly remove or destroy it,” Seeliger wrote.
DeKalb County has been trying to rid itself of the monument for years.
“This is a proud night, and this is one that I will always remember and that I will share with my grandchildren. And, I’m just proud,” DeKalb County Commissioner Mereda Davis Johnson said.
A marker that was added in September said the monument was erected to “glorify the ‘lost cause’ of the Confederacy” and has “bolstered white supremacy and faulty history.”
Demonstrators have been working to remove monuments they see as symbols of the United States’ ingrained racism since national protests began over the May death of George Floyd, who died after a police officer in Minneapolis pressed down on his neck with a leg for several minutes.
