Judge temporarily blocks removal of Confederate monument

A judge on Monday temporarily barred the city of Louisville from removing a 70-foot-tall Confederate monument near the University of Louisville campus.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman signed a restraining order forbidding the city from moving the 121-year-old obelisk honoring Kentuckians who died fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

Mayor Greg Fischer and University President James Ramsey had announced Friday that they would remove the monument, marking the latest government effort to reconsider displaying Confederate symbols following the massacre of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina last summer.

The city said the stone and bronze structure, for years a source of tension, would be disassembled and moved to storage until a decision is made on where it should be properly displayed.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans and Everett Corley, a Republican running for Congress, filed for the restraining order on Monday. They contend that the mayor lacks the authority to remove the monument and did not follow proper protocol.

County Attorney Mike O'Connell said he would aggressively defend the merged city-county government's legal ability to remove the sculpture from its prominent location between Second and Third streets, just next to campus and the university's celebrated Speed Art museum, which just completed a $60 million renovation.

The judge scheduled a hearing Thursday morning.

Corley, a real estate agent running against two other Republicans to take on Rep. John Yarmuth in the fall, called the statue's proposed removal "the 2016 version of book burning." He said removing the monument -- which features statues of three Confederate soldiers and the inscription "To Our Confederate Dead" -- would be an insult to soldiers who fought and died.

He charged that while the city says it plans to move the monument, it really intends to destroy it and throw it away. O'Connell called that allegation "ridiculous."

Some in the city and the university community have called for years for the monument to be removed. The city's announcement last week came days after Ricky Jones, a professor of Pan-African studies at the university, wrote an opinion piece in the Courier-Journal newspaper calling again for it to be moved. He called it "a symbol of treachery, terrorism, slavery and racism" and a "celebration of backwardness."

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