NC city votes to take down Confederate monument — and move it to a ‘safe’ place
Leaders of a North Carolina city voted to take down a Confederate monument — and move it to a “safe” location.
The Rocky Mount City Council decided 6-1 to remove a statue that has stood in Battle Park for more than 100 years, according to news reports and video from Tuesday’s work session meeting.
Recent protests
Last weekend, hundreds of people marched toward the monument during a protest over the death of George Floyd, according to ABC11, The News & Observer’s media partner.
Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled against his neck. That officer and three others are facing charges in the incident.
As demonstrators across the country called for justice and an end to police brutality, some have brought their messages to symbols of the Confederacy, McClatchy News reported.
In Raleigh, “anti-racist and anti-police graffiti” was found sprayed across a Confederate monument on the North Carolina state Capitol grounds, The News & Observer reported last weekend. Nearby, protests on Saturday and Sunday escalated, with some demonstrators damaging downtown buildings and police using tear gas and rubber bullets.
Sixty miles to the east, protesters remained peaceful near Rocky Mount’s Confederate statue, the Rocky Mount Telegram reported. Council members had mentioned keeping the monument protected from vandalism, the newspaper reported.
The motion that was approved Tuesday called for the city’s Battle Park monument to be taken away and moved to another place for “safekeeping” until a private site is found, according to the City Council session video.
Officials during the meeting raised legal questions about the monument, which is on a private plot, the Telegram reported.
Also, “North Carolina law prohibits the removal of confederate monuments unless approved by a state entity,” ABC11 reported.
Council members are expected to “confirm the vote” during a meeting next week, according to the TV station.
History of contention
Confederate statues in North Carolina and other Southern states have long been flash points. Many were erected during the “Jim Crow era of segregation,” Mark Elliott, a history professor at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, told History.com.
Some say they are symbols of white supremacy that should come down, while others contend they help preserve Civil War-era history.
Since 2015, at least seven monuments in North Carolina have been removed, leaving 95 still standing as of November, the Southern Poverty Law Center told McClatchy News.
Last year, officials took down Confederate statues in Pittsboro and Winston-Salem. Protesters in 2018 toppled the Silent Sam statue on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.
Across the South, several similar monuments have come down since 2017’s deadly confrontations in Charlottesville, Virginia. White supremacists had gathered in the city to protest the removal of a Confederate statue.
This story was originally published June 4, 2020 at 4:46 PM with the headline "NC city votes to take down Confederate monument — and move it to a ‘safe’ place."
