Activists will hold a protest near the historic DeKalb County courthouse to pressure county leaders to remove a cannon with ties to the Creek War of 1836.
The Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights will host the protest at 3:45 p.m. Monday, which is both known as Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The rally will take place a day before the DeKalb County Commission votes on whether to remove the cannon and place it in storage.
The cannon is purported to be a “relic of the Indian War of 1836,” a reference to the bloody conflicts that ensued when the U.S. Army and militias from Georgia and Alabama forced thousands of Muscogee people from their native lands. Activists call it the “genocide cannon.”
It was placed near Decatur Square by a local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1906, two years before a nearly 30-foot Confederate obelisk was erected. The Lost Cause monument was taken down in 2020 amid widespread protests against racism and police brutality.
“For more than a year since the removal of the Lost Cause monument on the eve of Juneteenth 2020, Beacon Hill and its Decolonize Decatur Committee has turned its attention to the removal of this other symbol of hate and white supremacy in our public space,” the activist group said in a news release.
Several protests have been held in recent months, and an online petition supporting the cannon’s removal has amassed more than 1,900 signatures. The Decatur City Commission approved a resolution last December to support the cannon’s removal, but the cannon’s muddled history makes its ownership unclear.
According to the resolution that county commissioners will consider, there’s no documentation that the cannon was ever formally donated to the county, despite it resting on county property. There’s also no paperwork showing it’s considered public property.
The resolution also raises questions about the cannon’s authenticity, saying it has an “unknown origin and provenance and thus cannot be accurately attributed or dedicated to any particular historical or military entity or event, including the Indian War of 1836.” The cannon’s own inscription calls it a relic, not a memorial or anything similar.
If approved by commissioners, the resolution would authorize DeKalb to put the cannon in storage and place an ad in the county legal organ asking for the “rightful owner(s)” to come forward and claim it.
The Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights has held protests and events on Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day for the past three years. While multiple states, counties and cities across the U.S. have switched from celebrating Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, neither DeKalb nor its school district have made that change.
The activist group made its stance clear.
“Rather than celebrating Columbus who was responsible for so much violence, enslavement, and genocide of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous Peoples’ Day honors Indigenous peoples and is an official city and state holiday in various communities across the United States,” the release said.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/FTAF5ZMCDZD5ZJ5SZ2U3Z5O2VI.JPG)