McKinney City Council hears recommendations for Confederate statue without deciding to relocate or not
By: Graysen Golter
Tags: Articles, Journalism, Mckinney, Texas, Graysen Golter

Originally written October 30, 2020

Close to two dozen McKinney residents sit socially distanced at McKinney City Hall as Justin Beller (standing in the middle) uses his 15 minutes to present his findings and recommendations to the city council (in the back of the room) as to why the statue of Throckmorton should be removed on October 20, 2020. Masks were required in the building but speakers could remove them as they spoke at the podium.

After months of research and discussion about whether to relocate a city statue of a Confederate soldier or leave it as is, the Throckmorton Ad Hoc Advisory Board presented two sets of findings and recommendations arguing for each outcome to the McKinney City Council on Tuesday.

Board members Justin Beller and Nathan White offered two opinions as to what to do with the statue of James Webb Throckmorton, a Confederate general who later became a Texas governor. Beller recommended the statue, now outside the downtown McKinney Performing Arts Center, be relocated to the Collin County History Museum. White said it should instead be left alone, possibly with an added historical marker to add context to Throckmorton’s life.

The council refrained from making a decision in order to give both council members and residents time to process the presented research.

Beller said the statue was a tribute to white supremacy and an attempt to redeem the Confederacy, as Throckmorton was among the state legislators who opposed the 13th and 14th Amendments. Throckmorton also helped pass the Black Codes that denied the rights of freed African Americans in areas such as voting and interracial marriage, according to Beller’s compiled research.

“(Relocation) provides protection to the statue as an object but also to our community and the division it has created and the potential it has to create,” Beller said. “It is a way to better understand our history. While we recognize that the Throckmorton monument is an object and relocating it doesn’t solve any problems in and of itself, I hope that just like the placement of the monument carried intent, the relocation of it does as well.”

White said the statue itself doesn’t suggest a connection to the Confederacy, as Throckmorton is not depicted in a military uniform and the statue’s text doesn’t refer to the Confederacy. He said Throckmorton had reasons beyond the Civil War to be honored with a statue such as his multiple terms in government and his service in the military.

“History is replete with examples of imperfect heroes,” White said. “Removing the statue significantly diminishes the city’s own embracing of its history. We firmly believe that the statue should remain where it has stood for over 100 years: a slight tribute to the patriot and statesman from his fellow citizens and admirers.”

The statue depicts the former governor in civilian clothing while he points to the sky with one hand and holds a piece of parchment with the other. There are currently over 1,700 former and current monuments or markers for Confederate soldiers in the U.S., according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The statue of James W. Throckmorton stands next to the McKinney Performing Arts Center in Downtown McKinney on Oct. 24, 2020.

White said the public input survey conducted by the advisory board found the majority of over 2,000 respondents were also in favor of leaving the statue as it was, although council member La’Shadion Shemwell pointed out that the online survey was not scientific and could have been taken by anyone in the world.

McKinney resident Tamara Johnson said the glorification of Confederate soldiers and racists not only distorts American history but erases the heritage of enslaved Africans and their descendants, as important Black Americans such as Sojourner Truth and Booker T. Washington rarely get the same recognition as people such as Robert E. Lee.

“Forgetting is a voluntary decision to no longer grasp something, not to destroy it,” Johnson said. “People today don’t literally remember the Civil War. Neither can they literally forget it. Sometimes communities decide that previously beloved narratives of the past have become divisive and deserve to be set aside. Asking Confederate advocates to forget in the name of a greater good does not mean asking them to erase the past. It means inviting them to the work of truth and reconciliation.”

Shemwell said he was frustrated with Tuesday’s meeting, as an earlier draft of the meeting agenda indicated the council would take action on the statue while the most updated draft said it would only receive and consider the presentations, a change of which Shemwell wasn’t notified. He said this change was part of mayor George Fuller and the city council’s efforts to delay action on the statue until the recall election for Shemwell took place. Fuller was one of over 3,000 signatures members of the community had collected to remove Shemwell from office after he proposed declaring a “Black State of Emergency” due to the killings of Black Americans by police, according to The Dallas Morning News.

“This meeting is a sham,” Shemwell said. “You have all the information you need. What you are trying to do is kick this can down the road so that the only Black city council member on here is no longer on here when you cast your vote.”

Fuller, who was calling from a separate room at McKinney City Hall due to his possible exposure to COVID-19, said his putting the statue on the meeting agenda was due to a high school student notifying him about the statue’s background and not the recall election against Shemwell. He said drafts of the meeting agendas almost always change before being finalized and that the city council needed time to digest the information presented to them on Tuesday before making a final decision.

“My mind has been open throughout this entire process,” Fuller said. “Don’t even begin to presume what my position is or what my decision is.”