Board considers plan on moving Ole Miss Confederate monument

State officials are considering the University of Mississippi’s proposal to move a Confederate soldier monument from a central spot on the Oxford campus to a Confederate cemetery that’s still on campus but in a less prominent location.

Trustees of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History are meeting Friday, and the proposal is on the agenda.

The move would still need to be approved by the board that governs Mississippi’s eight public universities.

The monument is one of many put up across the South more than a century ago. Critics say its display near the University of Mississippi’s main administrative building sends a signal that the school glorifies the Confederacy and glosses over the South’s history of slavery.

Pro-Confederate groups from outside the university rallied at the monument Feb. 23, causing Ole Miss basketball players to kneel during the national anthem, in protest of the rally. Student government leaders voted March 5 to ask administrators to move the monument to the cemetery.