America’s biggest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group is calling for removal of a confederate monument in Tuskegee. The Council on American-Islamic Relations spoke on Wednesday in support of removing a confederate monument that sits outside the Tuskegee Courthouse.
Macon County gifted land for the monument to the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1906. The Associated Press reports, records show a stipulation of the gift was that the land and monument be used as a “park for white people.” Now, Macon County has asked a court to give it the deed to the land.
Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director for CIAR, said that the monument promotes white-supremacy and anti-Blackness in a historically Black community.
“But when you have a monument that is in the area of a historically black college? C’mon its really insulting, and it’s something that should be removed. It’s a history that needs to be remembered as promoting system anti-black racism and slavery,” Hooper said.
Tuskegee has a 97% Black population, and is home to the historically Black Tuskegee University. America’s first Black military pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen, trained in Tuskegee during World War II.
Hooper said although CAIR advocates primarily for American Muslims, that issues facing all communities of minorities are relevant to their mission.
“We feel it’s important to broaden our scope to include all targeted minority communities," Hooper said. "Whenever any community faces bigotry, all minority communities will face that same rise in level of bigotry.”
