Confederate and Civil Rights Memorials Will Share Space in a New Park on the Campus of the University of Louisville

For more than 100 years a statue of a Confederate soldier has stood on the edge of the campus of the University of Louisville. An inscription reads, “A tribute to the rank and file of the armies of the South and to our Confederate dead.” The elected government of Kentucky never joined the Confederacy although sections of the commonwealth that were under the control of the Confederate Army did form their own government for a period during the Civil War.

Now the state and university are developing a one-acre park on the site that will showcase exhibits commemorating the civil rights movement along with the statue of the Confederate soldier. The area will be called Freedom Park.