History shared but unreconciled in city’s Confederate statue

In 1906, when aging, white Confederate veterans of the Civil War and black ex-slaves still lived on the old plantations of the Deep South, two very different celebrations were afoot in this city known even then as a beacon of black empowerment.

Tuskegee Institute, founded to educate Southern blacks whose families had lived in bondage for generations, was saluting its 25th anniversary.

Meanwhile, area whites were preparing to dedicate a monument to rebel soldiers in a downtown park set aside exclusively for white people.

Flash forward to today and that same Confederate monument still stands in the same park, both owned by a Confederate heritage group. They sit in the heart of a poor, mostly black town of 9,800 people.

The story of how such a monument could remain in place a century later offers lessons in just how hard it can be to confront a shared history that still divides a nation.