Dunston organizes through social media and word of mouth
During her final year at Albertville High School in 2015, teachers gave Unique Morgan Dunston a citizenship award and fellow seniors voted her the class clown. Today, she’s the target of death threats and jeers on Main Street.
The change is because of what Dunston does now, not who she was years ago. A Black woman transformed by leaving a virtually all-white Alabama hometown where new ideas about race and justice run up against Old South traditions, Dunston has led regular protests since August against a Confederate monument on the court lawn.
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Dunston and a small band of compatriots regularly chant anti-racist slogans, hold signs and use chalk to mark up the street with unrelenting demands to take down the monument, which has an image of a rebel soldier holding a Confederate battle flag. It was installed on public property by the Sons of Confederate Veterans more than two decades ago with the county’s permission.
“My hope and my desire is that as we continue, more people from the community will start coming out, that they will realize that this wasn’t a phase, that, ‘They are serious and they need our help,’” she said. “Because we do.”
The movement has some support: A retired county judge wrote a public letter endorsing the removal of the monument, and groups including the Council on American-Islamic Relations have sided with Dunston. More than 3,300 people have signed an online petition supporting the cause.
Yet like a biblical prophet unwelcome in her own home, Dunston has become a lightning rod for criticism by people who wish she’d just go away. Rather than removing the stone monument, the county has built a metal fence around it and passed a law to restrict demonstrations, some of which became shouting matches between Dunston’s group, Reclaiming Our Time, and Confederate sympathizers.
Source: Small-town Alabama resident transformed to protest leader
