More than a year and a half after the Missouri Civil War Museum offered to take the City of St. Louis’ Confederate Monument off its hands, the deal is finally done. By Friday, June 30, the museum will remove the monument from Forest Park and put it in storage – with the museum, not the city, paying for its removal and storage.
On Monday, June 25, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson announced this resolution to a suit the museum had filed against the city, in a press release followed by a press conference. At the press conference, Krewson said she still believes that the city owns the monument, which was the subject of the legal dispute, but it will become the museum’s property after it is removed from city property.
According to Krewson, the agreement also states that the monument’s permanent location must be at a Civil War museum, battlefield or cemetery – though not one in the City of St. Louis or in St. Louis County.
Mark Trout, president of the Missouri Civil War Museum, first expressed interest in acquiring the monument in a letter dated October 2, 2015. He was answering a Request for Proposals (RFP) from the Confederate Monument Reappraisal Committee that was formed by then-Mayor Francis G. Slay.
In his letter, which has an abrasive tone, Trout rightly predicted that the city would get no takers for the monument other than his museum, because of the protests against the display of Confederate monuments in several American cities. He said his museum was the only proper institution to acquire and display the monument. However, he did not comply with the formal requirements of the RFP, declined to provide any plans for the monument’s future use, and said the city would need to pay for its removal and transportation.
Slay’s committee recommended that the city either take Trout up on his offer, or pay to remove the monument from view and store it as city property – at an estimated cost of $129,280 for either outcome. The Slay administration took no action and left the monument standing in Forest Park for the next mayor to deal with.
Now, the museum will acquire the monument it wants – but at its own expense, and with some limited agreement as to its future display: at an historical site dedicated to the Civil War that is not in St. Louis city or county. (Trout’s October 2015 letter revealed that he had been told by the St. Louis County Parks director that he was not to display the monument on County property either.)
Krewson said her administration had not heard from Trout or his museum until the museum filed suit. Only in attempting to resolve that suit out of court, she said, did Trout offer for the museum to pay for the removal of the monument.
The City of St. Louis faces an anticipated $17 million budget shortfall, with both the mayor and the Board of Aldermen touting proposals to bring in more revenue. For Krewson, the priority is to pay, not to remove an old monument, for more police officers and police pay raises, with St. Louis County police expecting 30 percent pay raises in the wake of a ballot initiative to fund public safety.
A crowd-funding effort to pay for the monument’s removal started by St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones has raised $17,545 at press time. Though that’s more than $100,000 less than the cost of removal that Slay’s committee had estimated, Jones said she had an offer to remove the monument for $25,000. Krewson said it now appeared as if these funds would not be needed.
Jones told The American that the only plan for those funds is to donate them to the city to defrays any costs of removing the monument.
