U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay has a message for Mayor Francis Slay: Don’t just “reappraise” the Confederate Memorial in Forest Park; remove it.
“It is not only time for a reappraisal of all public symbols that reflect upon the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery, but also time for removal,” Clay wrote in a letter to the St. Louis mayor that was delivered on Monday, June 29.
Clay was quoting from an April post by Slay on his campaign blog, when Slay asked the Missouri History Museum, Forest Park Forever and the Incarnate Word Foundation to assemble “a centennial reappraisal committee” to reconsider the Confederate Memorial, which was presented to the City of St. Louis in December 1914 by the Daughters of the Confederacy of St. Louis.
According to the Post-Dispatch, that committee “didn’t materialize.” Instead Eddie Roth – former Post editorial writer, now a Slay staffer – is “looking into the issue.” The Post said Roth told them “he didn’t know whether he will recommend moving the park monument.”
Slay’s director of Human Services may not know what to recommend, but his closest ally in the U.S. Congress has made up his mind.
“I look forward to the removal of the Confederate Memorial from Forest Park,” Clay wrote to Slay. “Symbols associated with this country’s racist, oppressive past should not be elevated or displayed in public places.”
Clay is also teaming up with Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego to introduce legislation that would prohibit the Department of Veterans Affairs from allowing the display of the Confederate flag at national cemeteries which it manages across the nation, including Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis County.
The American previously called upon Slay to remove the monument in an editorial published last week, arguing, “The evils of racism, dating back to slavery, have traumatized our people and remain an entrenched part of our present reality. That is why this monument belongs, at best, in a museum.”
The American recommended that the monument be relocated to the Missouri History Museum, also located in Forest Park, where it can be situated in the context of the Southern states’ rebellion to perpetuate slavery.
