Screven County Confederate Monument Rededicated After Original Toppled

In August 2018, vandals toppled and destroyed the Screven County Confederate Monument erected in Sylvania, Ga., in 1909.

A new, 1,400-pound Confederate soldier statue was erected Aug. 20 at the site of the monument in the Screven Memorial Cemetery through funds raised by the Black Creek Volunteers Camp No. 549 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Margaret Jones Chapter No. 27 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

On Saturday morning, with 200 in attendance, a rededication ceremony honored the Confederate dead from Screven County.

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“I was looking at this monument and reading ‘Confederate Dead,’” said keynote speaker Paul Gramling Jr., the Sons of Confederate Veterans commander-in-chief who traveled from Louisiana for the ceremony. “We have a cancer in this country right now. They think it is OK to eradicate these monuments and everything they stand for.”

Waynesboro resident Brenda Lackman, the president of the Margaret Jones chapter, said the original monument was moved from the downtown park in Sylvania to the cemetery in 1965.

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