Gwinnett County removes Confederate monument from Lawrenceville Square
Staff Photo: Curt Yeomans
By Curt Yeomans
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As the center part of the Confederate monument that has stood on the Gwinnett County Historic Courthouse grounds in downtown Lawrenceville since 1993 came down Thursday night, state Rep. Shelly Hutchinson watched and quietly started singing to herself.
“Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye,” the lawmaker sang.
The monument — which has been the target of vandals and the subject of an ongoing legal battle involving the county, Solicitor General Brian Whiteside and the Sons of Confederate Veterans — was disassembled and put on the back of a flatbed truck with little fanfare Thursday night.
County commissioners voted last month to remove the monument for the historic courthouse grounds — which is a county park site — and put it in storage for its own safety while the lawsuit continues.
Commissioner Kirkland Carden, who circulated a petition on the campaign trail last summer calling for the marker’s removal, said the county will not release details of where the monument will be stored.
Carden was on hand to watch the monument being removed Thursday and said it “feels good” to see the monument gone from the courthouse grounds.
“This has been a longtime coming and it does feel good to follow through on a campaign promise that was important to so many Gwinnettians,” Carden said. “You know we started this petition on Juneteenth (June 19) of 2020. Fast forward, here we are now so I think this is a good start to build a better tomorrow, which was my campaign slogan.
“We’ve already strived to be a world-class community. I don’t see how you can do that with Confederate markers and hatred. The Confederacy stood for bondage, secession, violence, death, White supremacy. When you look at the mission statement for Gwinnett, it just doesn’t align with that.”
Crews began disassembling the monument at about 8 p.m. and, using a crane, had the three main pieces of it — the parts that had writing on them — down in just under an hour.
There was no advance notice given to the public that the monument was going to be removed Thursday night, although the resolution calling for its removal stated it had to be done within 30 days. That meant there wasn’t much time left to remove it since the deadline would have come up in mid-February.
The main clue for the general public that something was happening was the fact that one part of Pike Street was blocked off by police at the historic courthouse and a crane was stationed in one of the blocked off lanes.
“When I came around the corner and saw the police lights, it really hit me,” said Hutchinson, who has filed legislation to ban Confederate monuments from public lands.
But not everyone was happy to see the monument come down.
One man, who declined to give his name but said he was a member of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans, said he felt it was wrong to remove the monument. He said came across the marker’s removal by chance because he was driving by the old courthouse and saw the lane blocked off with the equipment in it.
He did not believe the monument was removed to keep it safe pending the outcome of the court case.
“That’s (expletive),” the man said. “I say they’re taking it down because they want to take it down, because they don’t want to see it. This new county commission we’ve got — Gwinnett County is just … going to (expletive) in a handbasket.”
