South Carolina’s state Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would extend legal protections to nearly all historic statues, monuments and even building and street name changes across the state, setting up a fight over how communities can revise public memorials. The legislation won 31-7 passage and now moves to the House with about a month left in the legislative session.
Supporters said the proposal is meant to limit local governments’ ability to alter historic markers, while opponents argued it would lock in how the state honors controversial figures. The bill defines “historical figures” broadly as dead people who “played a significant role in past developments,” and it would apply those protections to a wide range of memorials. Under the bill, local governments would need a proposal passed by the General Assembly to remove a monument or change its wording.
The Senate also voted to include a restriction aimed at modern interpretive add-ons: the bill would ban QR code stickers on monuments that can be scanned by a cellphone for additional information. Supporters of the QR code stickers had argued that scanning technology could be used to add a more contemporary perspective on Confederate or segregationist figures honored in public memorials.
During debate, Democratic Sen. Margie Bright Matthews read quotes from the Senate floor from Ben Tillman and John C. Calhoun. Matthews said, “Do we want to be a state that continues to debate and defend the legacy of treason, racism and exclusion?” and added, “You ought to be embarrassed about some of the stuff you want to preserve.” The bill’s opponents framed the measure as resistant to changing interpretations of history.
The bill also includes a mechanism for enforcement that changes who can bring challenges. It would allow officially registered private historical groups to sue if they think a monument is not being treated legally, rather than leaving enforcement solely to the state attorney general’s office. Democratic Sen. Ed Sutton said that could create problems for a place such as Charleston, and he described it as likely to lead to lawsuits from multiple groups.
Sutton said the practical effect could be that a city “is going to take a step back and say we’re out of the history game” and pointed to Charleston’s role in the Revolutionary and Civil wars. Another requirement in the measure would address what happens if monuments are moved because of renovation or road projects, directing that they be displayed in an area of equal or greater prominence.
The AP report also placed the South Carolina debate in regional context, noting that legislatures in other parts of the South have moved to narrow special treatment for Confederate-related groups. It cited Virginia actions under Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, including ending a license plate benefit for the Sons of Confederate Veterans that featured Robert E. Lee.
In South Carolina’s own legislative history, the report said monument protections were first passed in 2000 as part of a compromise that removed the Confederate flag from atop the capitol dome during the Civil War’s 100th anniversary. Republican sponsor Sen. Danny Verdin wrote in the bill that “the nearer a person stands in time to the event, the more likely their description reflects the conditions, perceptions and meanings as they were actually were understood when they occurred.”
That reasoning was used to support the QR-code ban, according to the report. The Senate debate also included testimony from outside groups: Preservation Society of Charleston President and CEO Brian Turner wrote in a letter to senators, urging lawmakers to “consider the value in allowing for an evolution in how the lives of those in the past are told.”
Democratic Sen. Darrell Jackson said his ancestors were freed from bondage through the Civil War and that he does not feel warm and fuzzy seeing a Confederate honored with a statue. Jackson said, “History is usually a matter of who sees it, who tells it, who experiences it.”
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