Memorial honoring Confederate soldiers is removed from Hollywood Forever

A memorial honoring Confederate soldiers in Hollywood Forever Cemetery was removed early this morning and will be stowed away in storage indefinitely, KPCC reports.

A Change.org petition to remove the monument was started Sunday, following a fatal white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, organized around the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee.

Hollywood Forever owner Tyler Cassity told KPCC that the cemetery received numerous calls from people wanting the marker taken down.

The cemetery is known best for its celebrity graves and popular outdoor movie screenings. Many Angelenos only recently learned, via an August 4 Los Angeles Times op-ed, that it was home to a Confederate memorial.

The marker was erected in 1925 and is owned by the Long Beach chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The group has long hosted regular Confederate memorial events at the site, though “no flags are allowed there.”

Ultimately, the memorial was taken down at the request of its owners. A representative for the United Daughters of the Confederacy told KPCC, “All we wanted was peace, quiet as we had for many years.”

The marker stood where some of the approximately 30 Confederate veterans are buried. Those soldiers had lived in a rest home in San Gabriel, the only one set up “outside of Dixie” for the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy.

“Here in Los Angeles, the Confederate rebellion found a welcome reception and a long afterlife,” says the Times.

• Hollywood Forever Cemetery removes Confederate monument [KPCC]
• Los Angeles has a Confederate memorial problem [Los Angeles Times]