The Polk County Commission heard from a lone delegate during their Monday work session calling for the removal of the statue of the Confederate soldier from the courthouse lawn, or if that isn’t possible to provide a plaque with context explaining the monument’s part of history in the early 20th century.

Brittany Harris was given time during the Commission’s work session held on Zoom to voice her concerns about the monument and what she felt must be done with it as other cities around Georgia are making decisions and holding public forums about how to handle the statues that were put up in the decades following the Civil War across the country.

She said that based on her research, she found no current local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who participated in having the monument erected honoring those from Polk County who fought on the side of the south during the war. She pointed out that when the statue was erected locally in the early 1900s, it matched a pattern of other statues that were put up in cities and towns across the south during the Jim Crow era, or later during the Civil Rights era.

She said she took specific issue with the words “Our Heroes” engraved in the monument, and asked what “heroic traits from the confederacy” that should be remembered today.

“They weren’t hereoes, they were traitors to the United States of America,” she said.

Her additional concerns were that the monument can be seen today as a reminder of the tools of intimidation used against black voters who sought to secure their civil rights in the decades following the war and through today.

“I want to see polk county be the best version of itself that it can be, and can continuously move forward,” she told the commission at the beginning of her time before the board.

What Harris said she would like to see happen is the removal of the monument from the courthouse grounds to the Polk County Historical Society with a plaque explaining its place in history within context, or at least have a plaque placed with the monument now providing that same information.

Commissioners provided no response to her specific requests for removal or the placement of a plaque, nor did they seek answers to any questions after she addressed the board on Zoom. No items were on the regular agenda for tonight’s session that would put the request up for a vote.