Alabama church removes pew honouring Confederate president
Posted February 10, 2019 10:52 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An Alabama church has removed a pew honouring Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
The pastor of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Robert C. Wisnewski Jr., posted a message on the church website recently saying the pew was dedicated at a service featuring a pro-lynching segregationist and had no place in the church today.
The mostly white church is in Montgomery, where Davis lived briefly before the Confederacy moved its national capital to Richmond, Virginia, in 1861.
The pastor’s message says church lore maintained that a pew marked with a bronze plaque honouring Davis dated to the start of the Civil War.
The message says the pew actually wasn’t installed until decades after the war, at a time whites were trying to maintain control in the South.
The Associated Press
