Confederate compromise: Mayor wants monument moved to cemetery

Cape Girardeau Mayor Bob Fox now is in favor of moving the controversial Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) statue to Old Lorimier Cemetery, where the remains of an estimated 1,200 Civil War-era soldiers are interred, both Union and Confederate.

"Placing the (statue) in a cemetery with many Confederate soldiers buried there is very appropriate," said Fox in a text Thursday to the Southeast Missourian.

The public graveyard, located at 500 N. Fountain St., is said to be the first one in Cape Girardeau.

According to the city's website, more than 6,500 people are laid to rest in the 5 ½-acre burial site, but most graves are unmarked.

Old Lorimier is surrounded by a 6-feet-tall metal fence with barbed wire at the top because of past vandalism.

A sign at the main gate said an appointment is necessary to enter.

Fox, who days earlier had opposed relocation of the 14-½ foot white slab marker, said he believes now a suggestion made by the Kellerman Foundation for Historical Preservation should be followed.

Kellerman chairman Dr. Frank Nickell, retired Southeast educator and historian, has penned a letter to Fox and Cape Girardeau City Council recommending the monument be moved but not placed in storage.

"(The Kellerman Foundation) respectfully urge(s) the (city) council to retain the Confederate monument as an integral and indispensable part of our city's rich history," Nickell wrote, "but to relocate it to the more appropriate venue of the Old Lorimier Cemetery."

On June 23, at Fox's direction, the city's historical preservation commission voted on the issue of the monument and encouraged -- 8-0 -- the immediate removal and storage of the marker, now in Ivers Square near the old common pleas courthouse.

In his letter, Nickell said relocating the 12-½ ton monument to a storage unit would be a mistake.

"(The monument) should not be relegated to a warehouse where it will never again be seen," stated Nickell.

"Perhaps it is now more important that (the marker) remain on public lands (to) remind us of the evil of slavery and racism and why it was necessary to wage a bitter Civil War to combat that evil," he added.

In a separate letter supplied to the Southeast Missourian, Fox claimed the monument could be a "teaching moment" for everybody.

"We in Cape Girardeau have a chance to show our country we are not divided but united against racism and injustice, not by tearing down a monument, but using it to confront our past history and then change it," Fox, mayor since 2018, added.

City Council is expected to consider monument options when it meets Monday at 5:00 p.m. in its chambers at 401 Independence Street.

The C.S.A. monument was erected in 1931 on Morgan Oak Street near the Mississippi River by a group called the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The marker was moved to its current location in 1995.