Activists urge officials to drop charges against 4 arrested for toppling Lee High statue

After four people were arrested Monday night and charged with tearing down a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at its namesake local high school, Montgomery activists have mounted a campaign to lobby law enforcement officials to drop the felony charges. 

The statue was taken down sometime Monday night, as hundreds gathered just a few miles away on Dexter Avenue to protest police brutality and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Lee's toppling coincided with the dismantling of a Confederate memorial obelisk in downtown Birmingham, as protesters and citizens across the nation demanded Confederate memorials, built to commemorate a government resting on the principle of white supremacy, be taken down. 

More:Arrests made after Robert E. Lee High statue removed amid downtown protests

Jeremy Selmar, 28, Jonathan Williams, 34, Joe Pernell, 35, and 28-year-old Maya Holley were each charged with first-degree criminal mischief, a Class C felony, in connection to the statue toppling. According to state law, a person commits the crime of first-degree criminal mischief if damages to property exceed $2,500.

“These statues and monuments should have been removed long ago and these activists just did what the city hasn’t had the courage to do,” said Ryan Dalton, a teacher at Sidney Lanier High — another Montgomery public school named after a Confederate leader.

The Montgomery Bail Out Fund, established earlier this spring to post bail for county inmates amid the coronavirus pandemic, posted Tuesday morning all four had been bailed out. 

The Bail Out Fund was one of several groups and local activists to encourage people to call District Attorney Daryl Bailey's office and ask them to drop the charges against the four. 

Contacted Tuesday morning, Bailey said he hadn't yet seen the charges nor was consulted by the City of Montgomery. The Montgomery Advertiser has also reached out to the city and Mayor Steven Reed for comment.

More:Montgomery group raises funds to bail out county inmates amid coronavirus pandemic

"Montgomery County DA, Daryl Bailey, has the full authority to drop the CLASS C FELONY charges against the activists who have been accused of toppling the Robert E. Lee statue," the Fund posted on Twitter. "Join us in contacting the DA and demanding that all charges be dropped! #DropTheStatue #DropTheCharges"

The Montgomery Public School district on Tuesday announced the Lee statue had been moved to storage, though its pedestal bearing Lee's name was still standing outside the school. On Tuesday, it was repainted to cover up graffiti. Lashinda Carter, 42, was charged with third-degree criminal mischief about midnight in connection to the graffiti, Capt. Saba Coleman said. 

Any decisions made about the statue or the name of the school will be left to the school board, city spokesman Griffith Waller said.

More:Damaged statue of Confederate Robert E. Lee placed in storage after removal from school grounds

The debate regarding confederate statues, Dalton said, is hypocritical.

“It’s one of those situations where people cry and whine that removing these monuments and relics of the past that are honoring the Confederacy, Confederate soldiers and white supremacy, they cry and whine that we are erasing the past. But they are the very same people, when talking about slavery and systematic injustices, say ‘Oh let’s just leave the past behind and move on’,” Dalton said. 

Protesters on Monday night voiced strong opinions about Confederate memorials and statues.  

"Montgomery full of slave trophies,” one man said, before saying the memorials "had to come down."

The statue was unveiled in 1908, a commemoration of a white supremacist government defeated 43 years earlier. The statue was one among a spike of Confederate memorials built across the country in the early 1900s during a period of intense racial tensions in the country. A second wave of Confederate memorials were commissioned during the later Civil Rights Movement. 

More:More than 1,700 Confederate symbols remain in public spaces, SPLC reports

It was initially placed at the corner of Madison Terrace and Winona Avenue. Later it was moved closer to Ann Street along Madison Avenue before moving to the school in 1960, five years after the then all-white school was opened. 

Lee High School students walk past the statue of General Robert E. Lee, who the school is named after, on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017, in Montgomery, Ala.

“I don’t understand why in 2020 a vast majority black student population, or any population for that matter but especially a majority black one, should go to a school named after a known white supremacist. Jefferson Davis should be renamed; Robert E. Lee should be renamed; Sidney Lanier should be renamed," Dalton said. 

Dalton added that because the alleged crimes took place on MPS property, “I would also encourage MPS to actively work toward all charges being dropped and for all schools named after white supremacists to be renamed.”

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Kirsten Fiscus at 334-318-1798 or KFiscus@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KDFiscus