After the Charleston church shootings in June, Democratic Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear asked the state commission to decide if a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis should remain in the capitol rotunda. On Wednesday, the commission responded with a resounding "yes."

Instead of caving to the national political pressure, Sen. Mitch McConnell's request, and that of the local NAACP chapter, the state commission felt it better to use the statue as an educational tool and tell visitors why the statue stands there alongside others, including President Abraham Lincoln. Chairman Steve Collins said:

I hope the message that was sent was that we have a lot of educational work to do and that we do believe that the history is important, but that we also believe that we need to explain the context of the Civil War with respect to that statue being in the rotunda.

And that's why in the vote, the commission also created a special committee for the purposes of educating those that visit the capitol. But according to Kentucky's NAACP President Raoul Cunningham, the education aspect simply "whitewashed" the entire call to bring the statue down:

I don’t think you need a statue of Hitler in the state Capitol to discuss the ills of Nazism or the Holocaust.

But most of the state (73%) was behind keeping the statue, which has stood since 1932, as WFPL news reported. There were also over 3,000 public comments submitted to the commission, most of which were in support. And out of 250 phone calls made, less than 20 called for removal, the report states.