SC legislators seek to expand Heritage Act protections to all public memorials By: Jessica Holdman - March 26, 2025 5:21 pm
COLUMBIA — A pair of legislators wants to protect all memorials on public property in South Carolina by expanding on a law passed a quarter-century ago primarily to keep Confederate monuments in place.
Sen. Danny Verdin, R-Laurens, and Rep. Bill Taylor, R-Aiken, introduced sibling bills Wednesday to expand a portion of state law commonly called the Heritage Act.
Since 2000, state law has given the Legislature sole authority over whether to remove or change the name of any building or memorial on public property that commemorates American wars, as well as Native American or African American history.
The Heritage Act The following is the 2000 law, commonly called the Heritage Act: No Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, War Between the States, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, Native American, or African-American History monuments or memorials erected on public property of the state or any of its political subdivisions may be relocated, removed, disturbed, or altered. No street, bridge, structure, park, preserve, reserve, or other public area of the state or any of its political subdivisions dedicated in memory of or named for any historic figure or historic event may be renamed or rededicated. No person may prevent the public body responsible for the monument or memorial from taking proper measures and exercising proper means for the protection, preservation, and care of these monuments, memorials, or nameplates.
Source: S.C. Code of Laws
But a Charleston-based group formed in 2018 to fight the removal of monuments argues the law is “no longer effective” following efforts by several boards and municipalities to oust memorials honoring certain controversial historic and Confederate figures.
In addition to expanding the scope of monuments covered under the law, the proposed legislation would allow private organizations to file lawsuits to block removal and punish those who do so without authorization.
Brett Barry with the American Heritage Association said he thinks granting legal standing to private organizations like his will deter further removals.
“You will end up in court, and you will lose,” he said at a news conference at the Statehouse.
The legislation would allow a judge to order groups that remove or alter a memorial without the Legislature’s permission to pay restitution. The state also could withhold funds to local governments.
A statue removed Barry, a board member of the association, said the tide turned in 2020 with the removal of the bronze statue of John C. Calhoun from Marion Square in downtown Charleston.
Charleston City Council voted to pluck the statue from its 125-foot pedestal, where it stood for 124 years, in the aftermath of a white police officer killing George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis.
The removal is the subject of a lawsuit from groups, including the American Heritage Association, hoping to reinstate the statue. The city has argued in court it was within its rights because the statue was not on public property — the city leases the privately-owned square — and it didn’t memorialize a historical era covered by the law.
Attorney General Alan Wilson said the same in issuing a nonbinding opinion in 2020 about the statue honoring the former U.S. congressman, secretary of war, and vice president under two presidents. While Calhoun was a fierce defender of slavery, he died 11 years before the first shots of the Civil War were fired in Charleston Harbor.
The 12-foot-tall statue remains in storage as the city has tried unsuccessfully to transfer it to a museum.
Barry said the monument’s removal has since encouraged other boards and municipalities to “violate” the law.
Other monuments The Charleston County School District has removed a stone highway marker honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the Charter School for Math and Science on King Street. The ensuing legal battle drew Wilson’s attention. The attorney general filed a court brief saying the 2021 removal constitutes a Heritage Act violation.
Barry said the school district is “thumbing its nose at the authority of the state Legislature” and should have sought legislative approval.
As passed in 2000, the law required a supermajority vote in both chambers of the General Assembly to alter or remove monuments covered under the statute.
A unanimous state Supreme Court ruling in 2021 kept legislative authority intact but reduced the hurdle to a simple majority vote. Justices determined it was unconstitutional for legislators in 2000 to restrict the voting ability of future legislatures.
Though it’s dubbed the Heritage Act, those words don’t actually appear in state law. The memorial protection was part of a 2000 compromise that moved the Confederate flag from atop the Statehouse dome to a flagpole beside a Confederate memorial on the Statehouse’s front lawn. (That compromise also made both Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Confederate Memorial Day state holidays.)
The Legislature removed the flag from the grounds entirely in 2015, following the massacre of nine Black parishioners of Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston by an avowed white supremacist.
Other monument removals that have drawn the ire of the American Heritage Association include:
A statue of Christopher Columbus pulled from a city park in Columbia and transferred to the S.C. State Museum after it was vandalized in 2020 A name change to a city of Charleston auditorium whose previous namesake, Christopher Memminger, owned slaves and served as the Confederate States’ first treasury secretary Attempts in North Augusta to remove an obelisk memorializing Thomas McKie Meriwether, a white man who died participating in a mob that attacked a Black South Carolina National Guard militia at the Hamburg Massacre during Reconstruction. The mob captured and executed four of the Black soldiers. The city, last year, installed educational panels telling the story of the massacre and stating the monument’s white supremacist inscriptions “do not represent the attitudes of the people of North Augusta today,” the North Augusta Star reported. 'Beyond just wars’ Lawmakers have introduced previous iterations of the current legislation in past sessions, Barry said, but the Legislature has taken no action to date.
Verdin announced the latest effort during an annual Statehouse meeting of the South Carolina chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, The Post and Courier first reported last week.
“We’ve got to move beyond just wars,” Verdin told the newspaper. “There’s so many other monuments that are not in the black letter of the law that the attorney general and main courts have determined are not.”
Verdin acknowledged the number of monument removals in South Carolina have been few compared to other states.
“It’s my hope and intention there will not be another single monument brought to that demise,” he told reporters Wednesday.
Verdin said about half of South Carolina’s 46 state senators have signed on as co-sponsors. In the House, Speaker Murrell Smith also has expressed support.
“The cancel culture is here, and I understand that,” the Sumter Republican reportedly said while speaking at the Sons of Confederate Veterans event. “But at the end of the day it is up to us as South Carolinians to preserve our heritage and to celebrate our heritage.”
As of Wednesday evening, neither bill was searchable yet on the Legislature’s website.
| 
