The future of a Confederate monument in a municipally operated cemetery in San Diego was unclear Monday amid an online petition calling for its removal.
Last week, a 1926 plaque noting San Diego as a terminus of the Jefferson Davis Highway was removed hours after attention was called to it. Davis was president of the Confederacy.
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The monument at the Mount Hope Cemetery that names Gen. Stonewall Jackson is on a plot owned by the group that donated the Davis plaque — the United Daughters of the Confederacy. That makes its potential removal trickier.
"The city (of San Diego) does not endorse Confederate symbols of division, which is why it removed the Jefferson Davis plaque from Horton Plaza Park," said Tim Graham, a senior public information officer for the city.
"Unlike a marking in a public plaza, this is on a private cemetery plot."
A deadly clash in Charlottesville, Virginia, at an Aug. 12 demonstration organized by white supremacists resulted in renewed calls for the removal of Confederate symbols. Some people have taken to removing or vandalizing monuments and statues themselves.
The online petition on Change.org pointed out that the edifice was not a grave marker but a monument to the Confederacy and its soldiers. Hundreds of Civil War veterans migrated to San Diego after the war and are buried at area cemeteries.
