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Final week, protest organizer Distinctive Morgan Dunston stepped up the group’s demonstration efforts by including a visible show to the courthouse garden.
Dunston — who has led bi-weekly protests since August — and two different protesters positioned pretend slave physique luggage on the courthouse garden in an effort to spotlight the historical past of Marshall County and what the Confederacy helps, she stated. The luggage, which appear like they include our bodies, had been made out of rubbish luggage full of newspapers.
“You’ve gotten the precise to fly the flag at house, in your truck, but it surely would not make sense for these symbols to be at our public courthouses the place everyone has to go,” Dunston, 24, advised CNN. “It is presupposed to be a spot for justice for all, to should stroll by that courthouse and see these traumatizing symbols of White supremacy, it is not truthful.”
“I need to emphasize how grotesque and actual the establishment of slavery was, and the way the Confederacy fought to uphold that establishment,” Dunston stated.
“We are attempting to maneuver to a extra inclusive area and the Accomplice flag and the Confederacy was not inclusive. It was hateful and damaging and traumatizing to Black individuals and actually, anybody who wasn’t White.”
Marshall County leaders haven’t began a dialog concerning the flag and monument or responded to protesters’ calls for to take away them, Dunston stated.
On December 9, county commissioners handed a decision itemizing new protest tips on the courthouse.
CNN reached out to 6 county commissioners however didn’t hear again.
Dunston stated she and different protesters have been met with counter-protesters, who’re urging the county to permit the courthouse to maintain the Accomplice monument and flag.
Nancy Horton, a lifetime Guntersville resident, is among the many counter-protesters. She stated she believes the Accomplice symbols ought to keep “to remind individuals of the previous and go ahead.”
“I went to highschool in Guntersville and had many Black mates, I haven’t got a racist bone in my physique however I do have an issue with individuals making an attempt to vary my neighborhood as a result of they assume a chunk of stone is a logo of racism,” Horton, 65, advised CNN. “The South is what it’s, and eradicating a statue or a flag shouldn’t be going to vary what occurred so a few years in the past.”
Dunston stated she is going to proceed to battle till Marshall County removes the flag and the monument, which includes a picture of a Accomplice soldier carrying the flag. The phrases “in reminiscence of the courageous Accomplice troopers of Marshall County” are additionally etched on the again of the monument.
“My message to Black individuals is that we’ll win,” Dunston stated. “Irrespective of how onerous or hopeless these instances really feel as an activist, we’ll win as a result of the facility belongs to the individuals and we’re stronger collectively.”
CNN’s Alisha Ebrahimji, Artemis Moshtaghian and Lauren M. Johnson contributed to this report.
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