What to do with the Rockies’ only Confederate memorial? (MT)

MONDAY, AUG 3, 2015 07:58 AM EDT
ERIC STERN

... a stone fountain .. sits in a flower bed in a municipal park in Helena, Montana .. engraved .. “By the United Daughters of the Confederacy …… In Loving Memory of our Confederate Soldiers” ... What to do with the thing was the subject of a recent city commission hearing ...

The local justice of the peace .... irate ... and wrote a letter to our local paper in which he not only defended the monument but declared that the South left the union not over slavery, but to free themselves from the financial grip of “northern banks” ...

... Down the street from the fountain there are white swastikas on a black tiled floor in the lobby of the Montana Club, a 130-year-old building. The floor was laid long before Nazis, but it got covered up during a renovation and was not rediscovered until about 10 years ago, at which time the decision was made by the Montana Historical Society to preserve the floor because of its age, and because it had been designed by a famous architect. But an explanatory sign was put up next to the building’s entrance ...

In the end, the city commission voted on a compromise, which the town seems to be happy with: a small educational plaque, to be put next to the monument, like the one we have for the swastikas ...

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/03/what_to_do_with_the_rockies_only_confederate_memorial/