LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — A petition on Change.org has been create requesting that two Confederate monuments be removed from the Arkansas State Capitol ground to "more appropriate locations."
The request comes after a wave of memorials to the Confederacy were removed in at least three states following the death of George Floyd by police in Minnesota.
The Associated Press reported that a monument in Birmingham, Alabama was removed after protesters tried to take down the monument themselves. More memorials were taken down in Virginia and Florida as well.
Chris Burks, who started the petition, said that statues "foster division" in the state and "we should instead promote unity, diversity and inclusiveness."
"The confederate statues should be moved to a more appropriate location for historic relics, such as the McArthur Museum, or the Oakland-Fraternal Cemetery where other Civil War inscriptions are kept," the petition reads.
The petition also said that "historians agree that the statues were erected well after the Civil War in 1905 and 1913" and were used to make "social and political statements for the time in which they were erected."
In response to the petition and moving monuments, Governor Asa Hutchinson said decisions like that are made community by community and locally. He said it may be a conversation in the future.
Hutchinson said we don't need to try to change history, but learn from it.