Becca Yanez (OU)
Sen. Gilmore (SE) authored a bill titled Stop Erasing History Act. In section 2, it states, “Dedicated to, honors, or recounts the military service of any past or present military personnel of this state; the United States of America or the several states thereof; or the Confederate States of America or the several states thereof,”
Several amendments were adopted, three of which were authored by Sen. McGee (OBU) and one by Sen. Shaw (TU). Ultimately, this bill narrowly failed, with a 9-10 vote. Gilmore stated that the main goal was to give the state legislature the power to determine whether to take down a statue or not. According to Smithsonian Magazine, there is a correlation between lynching victims and the location of confederate statues. Below is an image with the provided map.
Shaw commented on the bill stating that he changed the bill striking the state historic preservation office in section 3 and replaced it with the legislation of the state for the people to be represented in the decision-making process.
“I think a lot of people not necessarily got confused but got opinionated on something that the bill didn’t necessarily did not address on whether monuments should be torn down or not be torn down- that’s not what the bill was discussing. The bill was laying forward a methodology in which we take care of it. We were hoping to set something up that would fix that.” Shaw said.
When Gilmore was asked about the intention of this bill, she stated, “My intent was to keep monuments in place that depict history unless they were specified by a legislative body if they needed to be removed. I think it’s a shame- I see on the news monuments and statues removed and while the people of those monuments don’t always depict the best people, some are not particularly bad people either and some represent war veterans. And whether they were good people or not they fought for our country and deserve to be remembered.”
Gilmore also revealed that she will not give up on this legislation and intends on bringing it again in the spring.