Florence City Council to vote on plaque to be placed in front of Confederate monument

By WAFF 48 Digital Staff and Aria Pons

Published: Jan. 18, 2026 at 4:26 PM CST|Updated: Jan. 18, 2026 at 5:48 PM CST

FLORENCE, Ala. (WAFF) - The Florence City Council will debate and vote on a plaque that may be placed in front of the controversial Confederate Soldiers Monument this week.

The monument has stood outside three different Lauderdale County Courthouses since 1903. And outside the current Lauderdale County Courthouse since 1965 and has been targeted by demonstrators who say it should be removed. Under Alabama law, the monument is considered “historic” and cannot be removed without state approval. The city has agreed to consider a plaque in front of the monument designed to give it more context.

The plaque will acknowledge that while early monuments placed after the Civil War were designed to honor veterans and those lost in the fighting, “The majority of Confederate monuments, however, were erected later, in the years between the 1890s and the 1930s, coinciding with the end of Reconstruction and the spread of white supremacist policies known as Jim Crow laws.” The Lauderdale County statue was originally dedicated in 1903.

“History is history,” Kaytrina Simmons said. “The good, the bad and the ugly. So I know it will be a controversial situation but the truth must be told. ”

City Council President Kaytrina Simmons placed the motion on the council agenda.

“Project Say Something is interested in it being there and so I pushed for it for us to go ahead and put it on the table instead of us continuing to kick the can down the road,” Simmons said. “Let’s just go ahead and put it out there and the council will go ahead and make a decision to either vote it up or vote it down but at least we’re moving forward.”

The group that dedicated the statue more than 100 years ago gave a speech using racist language saying “Blacks are not equal to whites in the south.”

Camille Bennett and Project Say Something want the public to know that part of the statue’s history.

Bennett doubts the council will approve it because of the wording on the marker.

Simmons adds there’s just no other way to word what happened.

“As for the language, there’s never a good way that you can share that language,” Simmons explained. “I mean it is what it is. You can’t fluff that. It is what it is with that language.”

Camille Bennett says this if it’s not approved, then she will place it on private property because it needs to go up one way or the other.

The vote on the plaque is scheduled for Tuesday’s city council meeting.

You can read the full text of the proposed inscription below:

Lauderdale County Confederate Soldiers Monument

FRONT

Following the devastating human losses incurred during the Civil War, communities across the nation sought ways to honor their dead. In the decades immediately after the war, monuments were often funerary and located in spaces set aside for mourning, such as cemeteries. The majority of Confederate monuments, however, were erected later, in the years between the 1890s and the 1930s, coinciding with the end of Reconstruction and the spread of white supremacist policies known as Jim Crow laws. In Alabama, Jim Crow laws were codified when the state constitution was rewritten in 1901 to disenfranchise Black citizens. These later Confederate monuments were often strategically placed at public sites, such as in front of courthouses or capitol buildings, to convey the permanence and prevailing power of white supremacy.

BACK

The Confederate Monument that stands in front of the Lauderdale County Courthouse used to stand on the southwest corner of Court and Tennessee Streets, where the first two courthouse buildings stood. The Ladies Memorial Association and the Florence chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy funded the statue. On April 26, 1903, Dr. H.A. Moody of Mobile, Alabama, delivered the dedication speech for the Confederate monument in Lauderdale County. Addressing a crowd of an estimated 5,000 people, he said that the monument stood to memorialize “the Confederate soldier” and “all that soldier stood for.” He then said, “And yet another message has that pure white figure for us, a message more wonderful and of higher import than all the rest. In this, our southland flows the purest Anglo-Saxon blood that pulses in any human veins,” and “nowhere here [are Black people] accorded social equality.” The monument was moved to its current location in front of the third Lauderdale County Courthouse when it was constructed in 1965.

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