Recently, the statue has come under criticism due to Gordon’s stance on race. Following the Charleston church shooting in 2015, a state senator proposed a law forbidding the official recognition of Confederate symbols, including icons such as the Gordon statue. In 2019, the government of Georgia passed a law barring the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials.
During the George Floyd protests in 2020, many protesters called for the removal of the statue, prompting a trending hashtagon Twitter, #TEARDOWNGORDON. In June, the minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, sent a letter to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp asking him to remove the statue of Gordon, saying, “the statue’s nexus to hate in our state is overwhelming” and “its presence is both divisive and offensive.” Protests regarding the statue and others prompted a barricade to be erected around the Capitol grounds. On June 11, a protester was arrested for vandalizing the statue, writing “tear down” with chalk on the monument.
Following these events, 44 descendants of Gordon sent an open letter to Governor Kemp calling for the removal of the statue from the Capitol grounds, stating that “the primary purpose of the statue was to celebrate and mythologize the white supremacists of the Confederacy”.
