Another Confederate monument just came down in North Carolina. How many are left?
A Confederate monument that sparked protests just came down in North Carolina, joining other symbols that have been removed across the state.
Early Wednesday, crews took down a bronze statue and pedestal that had stood at the Chatham County Courthouse in Pittsboro since 1907, The News & Observer reported. They will be stored until the United Daughters of the Confederacy finds another site for them, according to county officials.
And in March, the city of Winston-Salem paid to have a monument to the “Civil War dead” taken off the grounds of an old courthouse. The monument, which was erected in 1905, was slated to go to a private cemetery.
Those two planned removals came after protesters last year toppled the Silent Sam Confederate statue at UNC-Chapel Hill.
After those Confederate monuments came down, how many of them are left in North Carolina?
It’s actually hard to tell.
The N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources compiled a list of Civil War monuments around the 150th anniversary of the end of the conflict. Its records name 120 sites but haven’t been updated since 2015.
“We have not kept a record of monuments removed,” spokesperson Michele Walker wrote Wednesday in an email to McClatchy news group. “Most of them are not on state property and therefore not subject to Historical Commission review.”
Nationwide, the Southern Poverty Law Center also keeps track of the symbols.
It found North Carolina has 95 Confederate monuments, spokesperson Kimberly Allen wrote in an email Wednesday to McClatchy news group.
The center says seven monuments have been removed from the state since the 2015 mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The convicted shooter in that case had been photographed with a Confederate battle flag, fueling a debate about symbols representing the Southern states that seceded from the Union in the 1860s.
Across the country, several monuments were taken down after clashes surrounding the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, The News & Observer previously reported.
In North Carolina, proponents of Confederate monuments contend they preserve Civil War history. But those who want them removed have said they represent white supremacy.
Most of the state’s residents think public monuments to the Confederacy should stay put, according to Elon University Poll results released Wednesday.
Though some of the symbols have made their way out, the Tar Heel state still ranks third in the country for Confederate monuments, the Southern Poverty Law Center says.
Its total stands only behind Georgia’s 114 monuments and Virginia’s 110 monuments, the center says. Online data last updated in July lists 777 nationwide.
Across the South, more than a dozen Confederate monuments have been vandalized this year, The News & Observer previously reported. Some of them were in North Carolina, including at a Durham cemetery in April and in downtown Salisbury in March.
Protests had erupted before the removals of monuments in Pittsboro and Chapel Hill.
This story was originally published November 20, 2019 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Another Confederate monument just came down in North Carolina. How many are left?."
