Workers remove a Confederate monument with a crane Thursday night in Decatur. The 30-foot obelisk in Decatur square, erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1908, was ordered by a judge to be removed and placed into storage indefinitely. (Photo: Ron Harris/Associated Press)

As workers removed a massive Confederate obelisk from the old DeKalb County Courthouse Thursday night, attorney Mawuli Davis celebrated with a countdown to Juneteenth. 

"This was mounted and erected to intimidate our ancestors," said Davis as he livestreamed the removal of the 112-year-old, 30-foot-tall monument. Davis is a partner at the Davis Bozeman Firm in DeKalb County and co-chair of the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights. 

The monument was erected in 1908, the year that Davis said Georgia stripped away voting rights granted to its black citizens during Reconstruction, and just two years after a white mob killed dozens of black men and women in a race riot that became known as the Atlanta Massacre.

The obelisk base was inscribed with a narrative that promoted states rights even as it romanticized the defeated Confederacy in what became known as the "Lost Cause."

Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 that black slaves in Texas belatedly learned the Emancipation Proclamation had freed them in January 1863.

Thursday's removal comes as Confederate memorials across the nation are being targeted as antiquated tributes to white supremacy. The renewed attention has been driven by national protests that erupted following the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of white police.

"This is a victory. We're gonna claim it for … young black and brown children of African descent who are saying, 'Take this thing down,'" Davis said as the monument was hoisted into the air.

"They are rolling this baby out. They are rolling it out of here, and we are witnesses," Davis said to chants of "Take it down."

Last Friday, DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Clarence Seeliger declared the monument a public nuisance and gave the county two weeks to remove it. The action was a fitting bookend to the 78-year-old judge's career on the bench. Seeliger will retire in December.

As a young Emory University law school graduate, Seeliger won his seat by challenging DeKalb County State Court Judge J. Oscar Mitchell, who had sent Martin Luther King Jr. to state prison for violating probation for a $25 traffic ticket. 

Once Seeliger took the bench, he hired the DeKalb County court system's first African-American employee as his bailiff and became the first DeKalb judge to remove the Confederate battle flag from his courtroom.

Seeliger held that the obelisk had become an increasingly frequent target of graffiti and vandalism, "a figurative lightning rod for friction among citizens, and a potential catastrophe that could happen at any time if individuals attempt to forcibly remove or destroy it." He directed that the obelisk be removed undamaged and stored "out of public view."

On Friday, Seeliger declined to comment other than to say, "The order speaks for itself."

Seeliger issued the order in response to an emergency motion filed last week by Decatur City Attorney Bryan Downs, who as the sole plaintiff sought to declare the monument a public nuisance. Downs did so, citing protests provoked by George Floyd's death and demonstrators who repeatedly defaced the monument and called for it to come down, by force if necessary.

The state public nuisance law may be invoked by only four county officials—the city attorney, the county attorney, the district attorney or the county solicitor, said Downs, a founding partner at Wilson, Morton & Downs in Decatur. Although the obelisk sits on county property, "It's smack dab in the middle of our city square," he said. "That's why I had standing to file the suit."

Decatur city commissioners, the mayor and the city manager "blessed this action," he added.

Downs named DeKalb County as the sole defendant. County officials never filed a response, and no one moved to intervene. At an emergency hearing last Friday, county lawyers stipulated to the facts, Downs said.

The public nuisance law gave Downs legal leeway to have the monument taken down despite a 2019 state law intended to preserve Confederate monuments. That law bars the removal, relocation, concealment or alteration of historical monuments unless efforts are made to preserve them and relocate them to sites of similar prominence. 

Any person or entity that damages or removes a monument without replacing it is also subject to treble damages for the full cost of repair and replacement under the law, unless removal is authorized by the public entity that owns it.

Downs said the county commission previously tried to relocate the obelisk in accordance with that law but no one would take it. After George Floyd's death, it became a lightning rod. There was "serious chatter … about forcibly taking it down," he said.

"We truly do not want something bad to happen. And every day it sits out there, something bad could happen," he said.

Downs wanted it taken down immediately. Seeliger gave the county two weeks to comply. As the clock struck midnight on Juneteenth, county workers who arrived around 11 p.m. with a crane and heavy equipment, hoisted the monument high in the air and then hauled it away to cheers and applause from the crowd.