Arizona’s secretary of state wants a monument to the region’s Confederate troops removed from a public plaza adjacent to the state Capitol.
In a letter to the Department of Administration, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs on Monday called for the monument to be removed from public display and placed into long-term storage indefinitely.
The monument at the Capitol was a gift to Arizona from the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the early 1960s. An inscription says that “a nation that forgets its past has no future.”
Hobbs says the monument was a clear attempt to repudiate the progress by that era’s civil rights movement.
Amid clashes in 2017 over Confederate monuments across the country, Gov. Doug Ducey said it was not his desire or mission to tear down any monuments or memorials.
Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
