This morning, I announced that a monument dedicated to Confederate soldiers who died at a prison camp in Indianapolis will be removed from its current location in Garfield Park.
The grave monument was commissioned in 1912 for Greenlawn Cemetery to commemorate Confederate prisoners of war who died while imprisoned at Camp Morton in Indianapolis.
The grave monument was then relocated to Garfield Park in 1928 following efforts by public officials, active in the KKK, who sought to “make the monument more visible to the public.”
Our streets are filled with voices of anger and anguish, testament to centuries of racism directed at Black Americans. We must name these instances of discrimination and never forget our past – but we should not honor them.
Whatever original purpose this grave marker might once have had, for far too long it has served as nothing more than a painful reminder of our state’s horrific embrace of the Ku Klux Klan a century ago.
For some time, we have urged that this grave monument belongs in a museum, not in a park, but no organization has stepped forward to assume that responsibility. Time is up, and this grave marker will come down.
