Kentucky city to move statues honoring Confederacy, nativist

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – The mayor of Kentucky’s largest city says statues honoring a Confederate soldier and a 19th-century editor known for anti-immigrant writings will be moved.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said in a tweet Wednesday the city will move the John B. Castleman and George D. Prentice statues.

Fischer says his decision was based on findings by a monuments committee that said the city must not maintain statues that serve as “validating symbols for racist or bigoted ideology.” Fischer calls it a “challenging, emotionally charged subject.”

The Castleman statue is in a neighborhood east of downtown. Castleman was a Confederate soldier and later a U.S. general.

The Prentice statue is located at the downtown public library. Prentice was a Louisville newspaper editor associated with the pro-slavery, anti-immigration movement during the 1850s and 1860s.

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