Another battle over Confederate monuments is brewing in Texas, this time up in Dallas. Black leaders are upset the city may move a statue of Robert E. Lee and a Confederate War Memorial to a Confederate cemetery which happens to sit just off present-day Malcolm X. Boulevard.
“There's no groups around today that are of any recognition at all, that think those statues are for slavery. They're for the soldiers who went off to war and were defending their homes,” says John McCammon, 1st Lt. Commander Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
McCammon says statues and memorials are all some families have, noting that many Confederate solidiers were buried in unmarked mass graves.
“It's really disturbing,” he says, having traced his family roots back to both sides of the Civil War. “When are they going to stop erasing American history which is common to, like for me, both sides of my family?”
Frank Johnson, lifetime member of SCV, says you cannot pick and choose your history. “There are some ugly things about our past, but the Betsy Ross flag is just as much a symbol as slavery as the battle flag is.”
In recent months, there have been threats on social media to remove the statue of Sam Houston from Houston's Hermann Park because his family once owned slaves.
“George Henry Hermann was a Confederate soldier, so I guess eventually they'll do away with Hermann Park altogether too, it's almost endless,” says Johnson.