‘Powerful reminder of racism.’ Student movement works to relocate KY Confederate statue.
For many Centre College students and faculty, the stone likeness of a Confederate officer has stood far too close for far too long.
On a large grassy lawn on the grounds of the Presbyterian Church of Danville stands a nearly 18-foot-tall memorial dedicated “to the Confederate dead” of Boyle County and topped by a statue of Confederate Capt. Robert Logan.
Atop the statue, Logan looks across West Main Street, gazing on a Centre dorm.
“This statue overlooks the students of Centre College in their dormitories, in their campus center and it’s a very powerful reminder of racism and slavery for the people of color who are on this campus every single day,” said Emmy Greene, a sophomore at the college.
Greene is one of several Centre students who are a part of an initiative to raise thousands of dollars to aid the Presbyterian Church of Danville in its years-long goal to relocate the statue to Bellevue Cemetery, where Logan and other Confederate soldiers are buried.
As of March 17, the church has been able to raise just over $40,000 of the $55,000 needed, Greene said.
Why is the statue being moved?
The statue was erected in 1910 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy with the support of local Confederate veterans, according to online National Historic Registry records. Logan, a Confederate soldier who early in the Civil War rode with John Hunt Morgan — whose stone likeness in Lexington finished its move in 2018 from the front of the old Fayette County Courthouse to the Confederate section of the Lexington Cemetery.
In 2019, the Presbyterian Church of Danville decided to move the statue as it impeded “our ability to work with all members of our community” and will “be at risk from vandalism and public demonstrations” the Advocate-Messenger in Danville reported then. Additionally, the church said the statue’s current location was a compromise, as the groups originally building the statue had previously wanted it placed in Bellevue Cemetery.
The student initiative to move the statue didn’t begin in earnest until last fall, said Glahens Paul, a sophomore at Centre.
At a “conversation hour” where a few students discussed various campus issues last fall, one student mentioned the statue’s pending removal and sparked interest among the group, which resolved to build up awareness of the statue among the student body, Paul said.
From nearly the beginning, Centre and Danville historians have worked with students to build an understanding of the statue’s history and the local context of the time during which the statue was built. The history of the statue listed on the initiative’s website is built on historical documents and research compiled by local historians.
“Like many towns in the south, Danville has a history of lynchings, of urban renewal projects that demolished Black neighborhoods -- many of those neighborhoods, Centre now occupies. And we believe that that should not be forgotten. We are implicated in that past. We have a responsibility to help out with the contemporary issues it brings today.”
Centre to work with ‘dedicated’ student group
In recent weeks, the statue relocation initiative has gained steam. Multiple student groups have voiced their public support, an online petition urging action from Centre College reached 1,000 signatures and some of the students met with the college’s president.
“We will continue to work together with this dedicated group – and other students, faculty, and staff – as we engage the church (and if needed, the city) to encourage a rapid outcome,” wrote Milton Moreland, Centre’s president, in an update to the campus on March 12. “We support the church’s decision to move the monument and will work with their leadership to insure the monument is relocated.”
Greene said the students initially requested that the college close the gap in funding needed to relocate the statue, but Moreland told the students that there may be some complications related to Centre contributing directly.
Once the money is raised, the city of Danville will have to approve an application to place a monument in Bellevue Cemetery, Rev. Caroline Kelly of the church where the statue currently sits told the Advocate-Messenger last June.
Kelly told the paper that the church has already completed a geotechnical survey of the proposed site and will purchase the space when the funds are available.
Paul, who identifies himself as Black, said he hopes the statue’s removal will be the spark of larger and ongoing conversations about race in the community. When he first saw the statue on a short walk from his dorm he said it made him feel “unsafe” in the presence of a monument dedicated to “a group of rebels who sought to keep Black people enslaved.”
“The fact that I had this uncomfortable feeling, and it’s not mutually shared, really gave me that unsafe feeling,” Paul said. “If a statue is tolerated in this place, what else would be tolerated?”