Alabama AG threatens $25K fine after city changes Confederate name

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) is threatening a $25,000 fine for the state’s capital of Montgomery after the city changed a street’s name from that of the president of the Confederacy to Fred D. Gray Avenue, multiple news outlets reported on Thursday.

In a letter sent earlier this month, Marshall warned Montgomery that if the fine isn’t paid by Dec. 8, he will file a lawsuit against the city for violating a state law protecting Confederate monuments and other longstanding memorials.

The Alabama Memorial Preservation Act prohibits the removal or alteration of monuments, memorials, streets, and memorial buildings that have stood for more than 40 years, according to CBS News affiliate KFDM.

Montgomery’s city government last month changed the name of what had then been Jeff Davis Avenue to Fred D. Gray, an attorney grew up on the street and had a significant impact during the Civil Rights movement, representing the likes of Rosa Parks and others in cases about segregation practices in the south. 

Martin Luther King Jr. once called Gray “the chief counsel for the protest movement,” KFDM reported. 

In a telephone interview, Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed told the CBS affiliate it is important for the city to honor heroes “that have fought to make this union as perfect as it can be.” 

“When I see a lot of the Confederate symbols that we have in the city, it sends a message that we are focused on the lost cause as opposed to those things that bring us together under the Stars and Stripes,” Reed said.

The city of Huntsville, Ala., last year paid a $25,000 fine to the state after removing a Confederate memorial outside the county courthouse, KFDM noted.