Former Macon Mayor C. Jack Ellis says he wants the confederate monuments in Macon taken down.
This comes after growing controversy nationwide surrounding the confederate flag since last week's fatal shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.
Ellis says he agrees with the people in South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama that the flag has no further use on public property. "The flag is a symbol of the years gone by. But it's an abrasive symbol. The flag was used and taken into battle to fight against this country. The flag was used as a treason to destroy our country and it has no standing," said Ellis.
He says the confederate monuments stand for a system of superiority and it serves no purpose in our cities. "The time is now. We know the civil war was about maintaining an economic system and the only way that could have been maintained in the south was with free labor and that happened to be African-American enslaved people," said Ellis.
Ellis says the monuments and flags should be put into museums. "We don't have to obliterate our history and I think we should have civil war markers," said Ellis.
Ellis says he's working with groups to place markers throughout Macon to remember where slave trade markets were. He says he hopes that will reflect part of our history as a country.
