INDIANAPOLIS — A monument dedicated to Confederate soldiers will be removed from Garfield Park, Mayor Joe Hogsett announced Thursday.
“Our streets are filled with voices of anger and anguish, testament to centuries of racism directed at Black Americans,” said Mayor Hogsett. “We must name these instances of discrimination and never forget our past – but we should not honor them. Whatever original purpose this grave marker might once have had, for far too long it has served as nothing more than a painful reminder of our state’s horrific embrace of the Ku Klux Klan a century ago … Time is up, and this grave marker will come down.”
The grave monument was commissioned in 1912 in Greenlawn Cemetery to commemorate Confederate prisoners of war who died while imprisoned at Camp Morton in Indianapolis. The monument was moved to Garfield Park in 1928 because public officials involved with the KKK wanted to make the monument more visible to the public.
In 2017, the Indianapolis Parks Board passed a resolution to remove the monument once funding was available.
The expected cost of the project ranges from $50,000 to $100,000.
