The Jefferson County Commission is at crosscurrents when dealing with history — both the history of the county, and the history of the commission itself.

In a committee meeting Tuesday morning, the commission voted to consider forming a committee to debate the fate of two murals located near an entrance to the county courthouse. But in a separate matter, the commission declined action on removing photos of previous commission members later convicted of crimes from a wall near the commission chambers.

Commissioner Sandra Little Brown proposed a resolution that would call for a committee to decide what to do about the 85-year-old murals, one of which depicts a plantation setting with a white overseer and African-American laborers in a cotton field.

“There’s a majority in agreement that something needs to change,” said Gail Andrews, director of the Birmingham Museum of Art. “But we need to look at what is the best path forward.”

What could happen to the murals is partly defined by logistics; no one is yet sure whether they can be removed from their current location intact. “We need to research how it’s applied… I don’t know whether we could [display it] or not,” Andrews said.

Activists from the NAACP and other organizations have called for the murals to be removed completely in past weeks.

The commission will take official action on Little’s resolution in their regular meeting Thursday morning.

The artwork is one of three things at the courthouse that has attracted unwanted publicity recently. In addition, stone columns outside the courthouse entrances each feature a swastika symbol put in place in 1930, long before they became a symbol of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party in World War II. And a wall filled with photos of past commissioners includes six members who were later convicted of a wade range of crimes, almost all related to their time in public office with much of that tied to the sewer debt crisis that drove Jefferson County into what was then the largest municipal bankruptcy proceedings in the nation.

Those photos were the focus of a resolution proposed by Commissioner David Carrington, who wants the photos of six former members — Mary Buckelew, Larry Langford, Jeff Germany, Chris McNair, John Katapodis and Gary White — taken down from the wall.

Carrington’s proposal, however, died after other commissioners refused to make a motion that it be added to the agenda for Thursday’s meeting.

Commission President Jimmie Stephens opposed the action but added, “We need to own up to our history.”

Buckelew, who represented much of north Jefferson County, had a road named for her that runs from U.S. 31 to Mt. Olive Road, providing access to a county landfill. Her name was removed by the commission in 2013 and the road was renamed Barber Blvd., as it runs by the new location for Dewey Barber Chevrolet. Carrington mentioned that action in his proposal.

Some commissioners suggested that some sort of designation might be placed on or near the photos of the disgraced former members, but Carrington said such a move might actually direct more attention to them instead.