Parker County Commissioners vote to keep Confederate statue

After weeks of heated discussions, the Parker County Commissioners unanimously voted to keep the Confederate statue that has sparked a lot of controversy at the courthouse lawn.

The decision comes after an extensive debate on the ownership of the monument depicting a Confederate soldier. Parker County Judge Pat Deen said at the meeting that the county could not validate that the statue belongs to the county after a thorough research of county documents from the past few decades.

He said that the statue does in fact belong to the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

“We went through all the minutes from the court, starting back from roughly 1901 to 1950. In that time period, there has never been a motion made by the court to ever accept the Confederate statue, as you see out there,” said John Forrest, the county attorney. He added that the statue hasn’t even been inventoried ever since.

Although the statue does not belong to the county, Forrest said that the commissioners court “gets to make those decisions about county property.”

“The commissioners control the buildings and the property of the county,” he said.

Most commissioners said that the statue represents history and that they’ve spoken with several constituents who want to keep it in place.

“The number of calls and texts I’ve received in the last few days to keep the statue is 100 to one,” Parker County Commissioner Larry Walden told the Star-Telegram in a phone interview. “It is clear that this monument is a monument to soldiers who fought in that war, nothing else.”

Commissioner George Conley moved to “leave the monument where it has been for over 100 years and get on with whatever happens after that.”

The motion was seconded by Walden. Then the commissioners voted in favor of Conley’s motion, 5-0.

The vote contrasts Deen’s announcement from a few days ago that the monument would be relocated after protesters clashed at a July 26 demonstration that turned violent.

The protest was coordinated by the Fort Worth-based Enough is Enough and the Parker County Progressives to demand the statue’s removal, drawing several protesters and even more counter-protesters.

After that, the county judge stated that the monument would be moved once the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) raise enough funds to relocate it.

Walden told the Star-Telegram that the protest in Weatherford was violent because people from outside of the community “brought the violence in” and he said that he would call for increased law enforcement to keep any protest in the future from becoming violent.

Dorothy Norred, UDC Texas division president, was the first person to take the mic at Thursday’s meeting and she began by addressing the letter the local chapter of UDC submitted to the commissioners June 22.

On that day, the commissioners met to deliberate on whether or not to keep the statue but the issue of the statue’s ownership kept the commissioners from taking any action, which prompted the county to examine meeting minutes from the past few decades to find that out.

The letter called for the statue to be removed, but Norred said the letter was “unauthorized,” saying that the “individual did not have the authority to ask for the permission to remove the monument.”

Norred said her position on the issue is to keep the monument and that she’s received messages threatening to “tie a rope around it” and “drag it through the streets” if it isn’t. However, Norred said it’s ultimately up to the commissioners to decide the statue’s fate.

“I am turning it over to you to make that final decision,” she said.

The issue of where the statue would be located was raised in previous commissioners meetings, and in an email sent to the county judge, Norred said there would be a place where to move the monument in Weatherford.

A copy of that email was posted by the Parker County Active Democrats on Facebook.

At the meeting, Norred said that UDC identified two possible locations of where the statue can be located — one public location and another one private.

Norred suggested for voters to determine the fate of the statue in November’s election if the commissioners didn’t take any action, but the commissioners rejected that idea.

Deen said that the commissioners court gets to make the final decision regardless of who owns the monument.

“This body right here makes the final decision,” he said.

Forrest said that the decision is not made by only one individual on the commissioners court, but rather “collectively” by the entire body which at the end voted 5-0 to leave the monument in place.

This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 3:07 PM.