Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Attend Meeting
There will be a meeting of the Kennebec County, Maine County Commissioners Tuesday 2/16/21 at noon to determine the fate of the Melville Fuller statue in front of the Kennebec County Courthouse in Augusta.
Roger Leisner made a motion at the Commission’s January 21 meeting to remove the statue, given the former Chief Justice’s support of the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy vs. Ferguson and other racist positions. Leisner’s motion passed unanimously but debate will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, February 16 at 12:00 pm.
Born in Augusta, Maine, Melville Fuller established a legal practice in Chicago after graduating from Bowdoin College. During the Civil War, he served a single term in the Illinois House of Representatives where he was an anti-war Copperhead Democrat. As such, he not only opposed the North restoring the Union, but was considered to be a Southern sympathizer.
Those interested in weighing in may contact the three commissioners and attend the February 16 meeting via zoom.
Read more here: “Maine officials to consider removing Melville Fuller statue,” Bangor Daily News
White folks are removing statues and there will soon be no memory of what ugly they did. Sorry I cannot risk attending this meeting. I am basically a “plaque” person. A plaque of sufficient size to express his major actions and leaving him there sends a much more significant historical message, in my thinking. We can then see what folks thought of him when monument was erected and the evolution of thinking with the plaque *”There is no American history without Black history”* -Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute and former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 9:43 PM The Atlantic Black Box Project wrote:
> Atlantic Black Box posted: ” Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 12:00 pm Attend > Meeting There will be a meeting of the Kennebec County, Maine County > Commissioners Tuesday 2/16/21 at noon to determine the fate of the Melville > Fuller statue in front of the Kennebec County Courth” >