Alabama politician Johnny Ford risks being charged for his involvement in an unsuccessful attempt to saw down a statue of a Confederate soldier that has been on display in downtown Tuskegee since 1906.
Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson said Mr. Ford, who spent eight terms as Tuskegee mayor before his current stint as city councilman, and another man attempted to remove the Confederate statue Wednesday.
“Johnny Ford was up on a lift, him and another guy, and they were cutting the leg of the statue, trying to take the statue down,” the sheriff told NBC affiliate WSFA. The men had an electric saw, he added.
Mr. Ford, a 78-year-old Democrat formerly registered with the Republican Party, admitted he was behind the incident and suggested he is willing to pay a steep price to see the Confederate statue come down.
“If the state wants to fine us, fine. If they want to try to arrest us, fine,” Mr. Ford told a reporter for WSFA.
“I’m prepared to do whatever’s necessary,” Mr. Ford added. “To go to jail, to die if necessary, whatever.”
Indeed, charges are expected to be filed against all persons involved, WSFA reported. The Macon County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking details about the incident.
The 115-year-old statue was erected in Tuskegee, a predominately Black city and the seat of Macon County, by the Daughters of the Confederacy group more than four decades after the Civil War ended.
Vandals have damaged the statue before, and residents have unsuccessfully rallied for decades to have it removed from the formerly racially segregated park where it has stood for more than a century.
“Everyone knows that the Confederate statue stands for slavery,” Mr. Ford told WSFA.
“We cannot afford to, in Tuskegee, Alabama — Rosa Parks’ birthplace, the home of the Tuskegee Airmen, the home of Tuskegee University, this historic town — to have a Confederate statue that was built in a park for white people, to continue to stand in this day and time,” said Mr. Ford.
Mr. Ford served as mayor of Tuskegee from 1972 to 1996 and from 2004 to 2008. In-between he served in the Alabama state House of Representatives, becoming its first Black Republican in more than 100 years.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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