Gwinnett Commissioners Vote to Remove Controversial Confederate Monument

A controversial Confederate monument that has stood on the grounds of the Gwinnett Historic Courthouse for nearly 30 years is coming down.

County commissioners voted to remove the monument and put it in storage — officially to ensure its preservation during a legal battle — on Tuesday afternoon. It’s a legal maneuver to get the monument off the Lawrenceville Square while getting around a state law designed to protect Confederate monuments and keep them in place by saying incidents of vandalism in the last year have warranted steps to protect the marker.

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The monument has been the source of controversy — and legal wrangling — for months. According to the monument itself, it was “presented” to the county in 1993 by the Sons of the Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

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Solicitor General Brian Whiteside sued the county commission to get a judge to declare the monument a public nuisance and order its removal after it was vandalized last summer. It’s a move similar to ones taken in Decatur and other cities around Georgia to take down Confederate monuments by declaring them a public nuisances.

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