Charleston removed statue of John C. Calhoun almost 5 years ago. A fight over its fate continue
(Southern Partisan) – The future of a bronze effigy of John C. Calhoun continues to be debated in South Carolina courts — rather than in City Hall — years after Charleston City Council initially voted to remove the figure from its pedestal overlooking Marion Square.
Four of the council’s 13 members, including Mayor William Cogswell, have turned over since that unanimous vote to take the statue down in June 2020. But the current council receives periodic updates in private on the back-and-forth legal battle.
On March 11, council went into executive session to consult their attorney — one of a few exceptions in state law under which public bodies can close their meetings — to discuss settlement terms covering a lawsuit over what to do with the 12-foot-tall statue. No public action or discussion occurred after the 20-minute meeting behind closed doors.
A pending appeal is the latest in a series of legal maneuvers by several of Calhoun’s descendants and the Board of Field Officers of the Fourth Brigade — a historic militia which originally owned Marion Square over which a caped Calhoun monument loomed atop a 125-foot stone pillar for over 100 years — in hopes of returning the statue to public display locally.
A recent amicus brief the state’s attorney general filed in a separate suit involving a Confederate highway marker that was removed from outside what’s now the Charter School for Math and Science, appears to have given Calhoun supporters hope that…
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