In 2020, NAACP Claiborne County chapter executive board member Geraline Smith, her friend and two family members approached the Claiborne County Board of Supervisors with a petition to request the county to relocate the Confederate statue of Major General Earl Van Dorn that was in front of the courthouse in downtown Port Gibson, Mississippi.
Smith, her friend Devon Williams, her uncle Willie Smith and her cousin Keith Barnes gained signatures from hundreds of community members to remove the Confederate statue. Smith said that when she was presenting the petition to residents, many did not know what the statue depicted. When she told them that it was a monument of a Confederate soldier, many people said they did not want the statue to stand in front of the courthouse any longer and signed the petition.
It took six years, but the statue was finally moved this week. The removal of Confederate statues has been a statewide issue for years, with some communities having more success than others. Many of the movements to relocate statues began after George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020. Mississippi voters also approved a new state flag that year to replace the former version that featured the Confederate battle emblem.
“We got a lot of people on board. People were very supportive, and I’m just thankful to the citizens of the community,” Smith told the Mississippi Free Press on Nov. 13 while giving praise to former Claiborne County Administrator Avis King, who was instrumental in the statue removal process.
All five members of the board of supervisors approved the petitioners’ request, Smith said. But funding was a struggle for years, and she said the project got stuck in planning mode until the Mississippi Department of Archives and History found the money necessary to complete the relocation. Gov. Tate Reeves signed his approval of the project in May, Smith added.
The petitioners received the answer they wanted six years after originally speaking with the board of supervisors. On Nov. 12, a construction crew used machinery to lift the 20-foot marble statue off the ground in pieces to safely transport it to Grand Gulf Military Park, which is 10 miles northwest of Port Gibson out in the county.
“Don’t let anyone discourage you. Don’t give up,” Smith said. “That’s the biggest message I can say: Never give up. Because there were times when I was ready to throw the towel in and say, ‘I’m not going to worry about it anymore’ because it had been prolonged for so long. But now, I feel like, ‘Hey, we did it!’ I didn’t do it alone. We did it together.”
The United Daughters of the Confederacy erected the statue of Confederate Major General Earl Van Dorn, a Claiborne County native, in 1907. He earned his leadership role in the Confederate army in January 1862 and became the commander of the Trans-Military district, which was new at the time. A man shot and killed Van Dorn on May 7, 1863, because the man did not like the attention Van Dorn was giving to his wife.
The statue was the county’s property, thus the Claiborne County Board of Supervisors had the authority to determine the fate of it, not the Port Gibson mayor and board of aldermen.
Smith says she has felt hopeful this week from the statue removal coupled with Mississippi electing its first Black U.S. Senator in 146 years, Scott Colom.
“I was just ecstatic because I feel like for the first time in a long time, Mississippi might be moving forward,” she said. “I see so many things out here that I get discouraged about, so those are two things that made my heart smile, probably made my ancestors’ hearts smile as well. We’ve been backwards so long and Mississippi always has … a negative connotation behind us.”
Mississippi Free Press stories are always free because we believe everyone should have access to quality journalism. Donations from readers like you make that possible. Please click here to give to help sustain and grow vital, people-over-power journalism for Mississippians.
Readers can sign up for our free newsletters here.
