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A Confederate Statue Stands in Chadwick Boseman’s Hometown. 13,000 Fans Want a Boseman Memorial There Instead.
A petition with more than 13,000 signatures is calling for a memorial to Chadwick Boseman to be built in the late actor’s hometown of Anderson, South Carolina, replacing a Confederate statue.
“We must move past the tragedies of our past in this nation and celebrate new heroes. Mr. Boseman is a hero to this nation but more importantly a hero to the town of Anderson. His legacy was one of excellence and equality. As fellow citizens go about their day they should have a face that sees all people as equal,” wrote DeAndre Weaver, who started the petition.
Weaver was forced to reckon with the statue every day while attending Anderson University before graduating as the first Black graduate from its BFA acting program, according to the petition.
“As I left and entered my classroom, I faced a monument erected to a man and an ideology that believed that I was inferior,” he wrote.
South Carolina law would have to be changed in order for the Confederate statute to be replaced. The law, Section 10-1-165, mandates that no monument or memorial from a litany of America’s wars can be removed or rededicated.
“To move forward into a brighter day Section 10-1-165 must be repealed. And upon the removal of a monument to the past I can think of no better person than Mr. Chadwick Boseman as a monument to the future,” Weaver wrote in the petition.
