Group Puts Up Billboard Calling for Removal of Seattle Confederate Monument

A group that advocates for the removal Confederate monuments in cities across the country is turning its attention to Seattle.

The Make It Right Project recently put up a billboard in Capitol Hill, reminding Seattleites of the presence of a Confederate memorial right in its backyard. That memorial can be found in Lakeview Cemetery, also the home of Bruce Lee’s grave site, and has stood since 1926.

Make It Right {snip} has since made it its personal mission to get Confederate monuments removed nationwide.

The organization targets 10 cities across the country with monuments they deem problematic. {snip}

“In the past in other places and other sites, we’ve put up billboards depending on what the tone of the political landscape is or what the cultural landscape is,” Make It Right’s director Kali Holloway told The Ron and Don Show on KIRO Radio. “Here, it seemed like a public information campaign was the most important thing we needed to undertake.”

Seattle’s monument was erected by the United Daughters of Confederacy (UDC), whose own former president, Heidi Christensen, has advocated for its relocation to a more “appropriate” home in the Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp in Portland.

The UDC built and sponsored 1,700 such markers in the United States in the early 1900s.

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“It is notable that Seattle’s tribute to the Confederacy was carved from a 10-ton piece of Stone Mountain — the site where the Ku Klux Klan held its rebirth ceremony in 1915 — that was shipped across the country from Georgia to Washington,” she said in a news release. “The UDC sought to ensure that white racist terror was, both figuratively and literally, an elemental part of this monument.”

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“It is not a headstone, but instead a sculptural assertion of white supremacy and power,” she argued.

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