COLOMBIA – Pushing against what they call America’s “waking crowd”, a group of Republican lawmakers wants to protect South Carolina’s historic monuments and manufacturers and penalize any elected community or authority that removes them.
“It’s time to stand up and defend South Carolina’s history,” said State Representative Bill Taylor, R-Aiken, on March 9 at SC Statehouse, where he and several other lawmakers presented their “Story of America” legislative package. , a triple effort to further protect the state’s monuments and statues.
The measures would be:
- Withholding state aid for any community that removes memorials and charges elected officials who vote do so with misconduct in office.
- Require all markers and plaques to be certified by the State Department of History and Archives to be “factually accurate and free of opinionated statements”.
- Mandate to teach America’s foundation documents to all students from 6th to 12th grade.
Punishing cities and towns for removing their statues, Taylor said, may have led to the preservation of a century-old statue of former Vice President John C. Calhoun, which was removed in August from his pedestal in Marion Square, Charleston.
“In South Carolina, our historical roots are very deep and need to be protected from the small number of people who can cancel our monuments and bring them down,” said Taylor, who is sponsoring the bills with state officials. Steven Long, R-Inman, and Lin Bennett, R-Charleston.
“Nowadays and at the time when the awakening crowd is chasing our monuments from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to South Carolina heritage, that is all inclusive,” said Long of the state plaque certification proposal.
The GOP-led package won the support of retired Marine Corps general James Livingston, one of 69 living Medal of Honor winners.
“I did not defend this country abroad and I sent young Americans to their parents to be where we are today and allow us to be defeated at home,” Livingston of Mount Pleasant told a news conference. “If we want to survive in this great country and pass it on to subsequent generations, we must strengthen our foundation.”
Changing any monuments is already illegal under the State Heritage Act, a 21-year-old law passed as a pledge to remove the Confederate battle flag from the top of the Statehouse dome. He refers to markers that commemorate all conflicts, from the Revolutionary to the Persian Gulf wars and installations of black and indigenous history.
The law also prohibits the removal of public property from other flags or memorials for any war, historic figure or event without a two-thirds vote by the General Assembly.
In August, state attorney general Alan Wilson asked the Supreme Court of SC to decide whether the protection of the act to Confederate memorials is constitutional.
“The Heritage Act needs teeth,” said Taylor.
Colleges and universities also expect lawmakers to allow changes to the building names on their campuses, including Clemson University, the University of South Carolina and Winthrop University.
Authorities feared that, without penalties and a more robust curriculum in schools, revisionist historians would stomp pieces of South Carolina history.
“This is not hero worship,” State Sen. Dwight Loftis, R-Greenville, told a news conference. “When your teenage granddaughter says there are so many people in your high school class who don’t know that there are three branches of government, to say it’s hero worship, I hate to hear that.”
State Representative Seth Rose, D-Columbia, said that local government entities are better equipped to decide the fate of the markers in their communities. He is the main sponsor of a bill to remove a statue of the former US senator and confessed white supremacist Benjamin Tillman from the state building.
“Someone who represents Aiken should not tell elected officials in downtown Charleston how to do their job and vice versa,” Rose told the Post and Courier. “It is true that history cannot be erased, nor should it be. But elected officials can and should be able to choose not to honor those who deserve no place of honor on public land. “
Two of the “Story of America” bills, those covering monuments and landmarks, were presented, but had no hearings. The bill on the foundation documents of teaching in elementary and high schools will be presented shortly.
Follow Adam Benson on Twitter @ AdamNewshound12.