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Hogsett announces plans to remove and dismantle Confederate monument in Garfield Park

Photo of the Garfield Park Confederate monument.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – The Confederate monument in Garfield Park will be removed and dismantled in the coming days.

On Thursday, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett announced that the monument dedicated to Confederate soldiers who died at Union prison camp will be removed from the south side park.

“Our streets are filled with voices of anger and anguish, testament to centuries of racism directed at Black Americans,” said Mayor Hogsett. “We must name these instances of discrimination and never forget our past – but we should not honor them. Whatever original purpose this grave marker might once have had, for far too long it has served as nothing more than a painful reminder of our state’s horrific embrace of the Ku Klux Klan a century ago. For some time, we have urged that this grave monument belongs in a museum, not in a park, but no organization has stepped forward to assume that responsibility. Time is up, and this grave marker will come down.”

The mayor’s office says the monument after it’s dismantled will be placed in storage.

According to a release from the mayor’s office, the monument was originally commission in 1912 and then moved to Garfield Park in 1928 by public officials who were active in the KKK and wanted to make the monument more visible.