BRANDON, Miss. (WJTV) – During the Brandon Board of Aldermen meeting on Monday, numerous community members spoke about the Confederate monument in the downtown area.

In June, Brandon’s mayor asserted that any proposal to move the statue was hypothetical. Based on Monday’s biweekly board meeting, it appeared to be a real possibility. As a result, residents on both sides of the debate took the first hour of the meeting to express how they felt about the issue.

The last time the debate appeared with this intensity was roughly five years ago. It stemmed from a national reflection on the impact of racism nationwide and the recent changing of Mississippi’s state flag. During Monday’s meeting, 17 people spoke about the monument. Nine expressly called for the city to move the statue. John Toney, a Brandon resident since 1971, was one of those residents.

Toney retired as the executive director of the Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance. He also worked as a city prosecutor and Circuit Court Judge for Rankin and Madison counties. He asserted that the statue was an everlasting monument to white supremacy.  

“We might have taken the Confederate battle flag off our flag poles, but it is still carved in stone and sitting in the middle of town in Brandon,” Toney said.

Dan Duggan spent much of his career working in Rankin County as an assistant district attorney and criminal defense lawyer. He is the current commander of the Jefferson Davis Camp 635, a local Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter. While working in Brandon, he usually passed by the statue.

“Every morning I’d come down Government Street and go by that statue, I saluted the statue,” Duggan said. “That statue was my Robert E. Lee every morning that I went to the office.”

Trey Rein, the principal at Brandon Middle School, said a large portion of his school’s population is African American. That was a major factor related to why he advocated moving the statue.

“I don’t think that any of the arguments in favor of keeping the statue in its current location outweigh the good it would bring to relocate it,” Rein said.

This discussion was the first and main focus of the meeting. However, the discussion is not over. According to Brandon Mayor Butch Lee, a similar forum will be open for the board’s next meeting set for Monday, July 21.