A bipartisan group of community leaders and lawmakers called for the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue from the state Capitol rotunda during a rally on Wednesday.

The gathering came in response to the violent white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over that city’s removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.

“Do not ever tell me that Confederate symbols have no meaning,” said Sadiqa Reynolds, president of the Louisville Urban League.

“We have fought in America’s wars, we have nursed your children, we have prayed for your souls and still when we walk through our country and see the symbols of hate that we endure being flown, raised and honored, we are told to get over it.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned white supremacists who are gearing up for a rally in Lexington in response to plans to remove statues of Confederate generals from city property.

“We can have no tolerance for an ideology of racial hatred,” McConnell said in a statement. “There are no good neo-nazis, and those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms. We all have a responsibility to stand against hate and violence, wherever it raises its evil head.”

An Owensboro man is leading an effort to move a Confederate statue off the Daviess County Courthouse lawn.

Twenty-two-year-old Jesse Bean started a petition on the website Change.org to convince local leaders to act.

Bean says he was inspired to take on the issue following the weekend violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and efforts in Lexington to move a pair of Confederate statues away from that city’s downtown.

Bean says the local statue should be displayed at the Owensboro Museum of Science and History.

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Spokesman Keith Todd said travelers should bring “a five gallon bucket of patience” when coming to see the total solar eclipse.

The transportation cabinet is making final preparations for the natural phenomenon now only six days away. Todd said people from 45 states are expected to come to the region and the number of visitors is steadily increasing. He urges people not to park on the shoulders of roadways to watch the eclipse.

A Bowling Green clinic that evaluates potential organ transplant patients will not be impacted by the decision to put Jewish Hospital in Louisville up for sale.

The Bowling Green Jewish Hospital Trager Transplant Center outreach clinic opened in June. Jewish Hospital is the second largest organ transplants locations in the state, and is being sold by its parent company--KentuckyOne Health. David Lewis is the director of transplant services at Jewish Hospital.

A group called ‘Paducah Residents’ has started an online petition seeking the removal and replacement of Confederate monuments in the city and the renaming of a school named after the wife of a Confederate general. 

The Change.org petition says the monuments represent an era of African American oppression and slavery and gloss over historic violence. The letter also says the monuments serve to promote a “retelling of history that allows slave owners and bigots to be seen as heroes, and continues to embolden and empower racist and white nationalist event today.” 

The Lexington Fayette Urban County Council voted unanimously Tuesday to back Mayor Jim Gray’s plan to move two Confederate statues from the old historic courthouse grounds. 

But the issue of where to move the statues remains.

Additional seats were positioned on the second floor of city hall well before the work session began.  

Marilyn Dishman favors removing the statues of John Hunt Morgan and John Breckinridge from their downtown site.