Alabama House to vote on confederate monuments bill

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Alabama Confederate Monument
Alabama Confederate Monument [Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress]

A bill to block historic monuments from being altered or removed without lawmaker approval is getting a vote in the Alabama House.

SB60, otherwise known as the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act, was introduced by Tuscaloosa-Republican state Sen. Gerald Allen and was approved by the state Senate in late March and passed the State Government Committee in the House of Representatives earlier this month.

Now, the bill is scheduled for a Thursday vote by the full House, which would “prohibit the relocation, removal, alteration, renaming, or other disturbance of monuments located on public property which have been in place for 20 or more years.”

Similar legislation has been introduced since 2015, when then-Gov. Robert Bentley removed Confederate flags from Capitol grounds.

The vote was fast-tracked, coming days after a Confederate statue in New Orleans was taken down.

There are currently more than a dozen Confederate memorials sprinkled across the Yellowhammer State.