Historic Monument Site Now Just a Hole in the Ground

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The historic Civil War Memorial that has been standing on the same spot for over 117 years, has now been completely disassembled and removed from the Caddo Parish Courthouse grounds. The monument was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1905.  That particular site was chosen at the time because just after the Civil War, Shreveport was the capital of the Confederacy.  And according to the Jefferson Davis biography, the lowering of the Confederate Flag in 1865 represented the final location the Confederate Flag officially flew in Louisiana.

The site wasn't chosen because of the courthouse.  The existing courthouse wasn't built until 26 years after the monument was already standing.  The courthouse started construction in 1926, and was completed two years later in 1928.  The monument was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.

Ownership of the land surrounding the courthouse was in dispute by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. But recently the court ruled in favor of the parish. In this age of woke culture, historic monuments are being torn down across the country, including those of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, (who led the Union Armies to victory over the Confederacy) and even Abraham Lincoln, (the President who freed the slaves).  Confederate Monuments have been destroyed or dismantled across the country, including the Confederate War Memorial in Dallas,Texas, a Confederate soldier grave marker in Silver Spring Maryland, to a monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The Caddo Parish Commission voted to remove the monument in 2017.  In 2019 the United Daughters of the Confederacy were ordered to move the monument within 90 days.  A box was built around the monument in 2020, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy then agreed in 2020 to allow the parish to move the monument to a private location near the Civil War battlefield site in Mansfield.