Confederate Flags Policy Raised at Eureka Springs Cemetery Commission Meeting

Last month, the Eureka Springs Cemetery Commission took measures to control grave decorations, after a flurry of Confederate flags have, for years, been permanently placed on dozens of graves by a local commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Carroll County. The new rules, according to a resident who raised alarm about the Confederate flags, is vastly inadequate. 

The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program Review Board approved the move of a controversial Confederate monument in Bentonville to a nearby private park. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996 for commemorating Confederate Veterans and their cause, the statue was installed and is owned by James H. Berry Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. 

The Arkansas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which own the Confederate soldier monument on the Bentonville square, has reached an agreement with the Benton County Historical Society to relocate the statue to a private park that will be named after James H. Berry. The process of moving the monument, which was placed on the square in 1908, will begin in August.

The Confederate soldier statue on the downtown square in Bentonville was put there in 1908. Following the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia earlier this month, a local group called Ozark Indivisble started a petition calling for the monument's removal. That petition spurred another petition declaring support for keeping the monument. The statue was put up more than 40 years after the Civil War at a time when Arkansas and many other southern states were erecting Confederate monuments.