The North Carolina NAACP petitioned the state courts to remove a Confederate statue from the front of the Alamance County courthouse.
The News & Observer reported:
An appeals court has rejected the NAACP’s arguments for removing the Confederate monument standing outside the Alamance County courthouse, citing state law that prohibits its removal.
Both the state and Alamance branches of the civil rights group filed suit in 2021, arguing that the 30-foot rebel soldier’s statue is an enduring symbol of white supremacy and should be relocated to a “historically appropriate location.”
The suit followed a nationwide string of protests that saw Confederate statues pulled down in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, along with numerous Black Lives Matter protests in downtown Graham, including one in 2020 that saw demonstrators pepper-sprayed during a march to the polls.
In their lawsuit, lawyers for the NAACP argued that the monument in Graham violates the state Constitution by ”maintaining and protecting a symbol of white supremacy in front of an active courthouse.”
They further argued that Alamance officials kept the statue in its place out of a spirit of discrimination, which would violate the state’s equal-protection clause.
But the court brushed these arguments aside by invoking the Monuments Protection Law passed by the General Assembly in 2015.
“The record conclusively shows that the Monument is a monument located on public property which commemorates military service that is part of North Carolina’s history,” read the N.C. Appeals Court’s decision. “In so concluding, we note our federal government recognizes that service in the Confederate Army qualifies as “military service. … We conclude that, under the Monument Protection Law, (Alamance County and its commissioners) lack authority to remove the Monument.”
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/article286861880.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would suggest the following placement of a historical sign:
Statues like these were a part of the period of White Supremacy after the war. By 1900, White Supremacists were in full control throughout the defeated states and political leadership sought to control the electorate by commemorating confederate leaders as defenders of freedom. Monuments like this went up in many towns even as racially-motivated hate crime spiked amid lingering economic hardship and dramatic social change. Political leadership continued the domination of communities until the civil rights movement challenged the status quo after World War II.
Some may ask why I am not in favor of tearing these monstrous tributes down the way they pulled down saddam hussien. I think pulling them down hides the atrocity that people lived with for all the generations when racial hatred lingered. It still lingers. These statues should remind us that we were and still are sinners. If we were in another day, we would go to them and tear our clothes and weep for our own transgressions.
This is why I support removing them to museums, where they can be curated by professionals and presented with accurate background information.
When I lived in Charlottesville, which has a huge black population, I was furious every time I drove by the Robert E. Lee statue. Obscene to be honoring this man.
I sure see that. But somehow we need to do what Germany did with Hitler. This needs to be on the conscience of the entire nation. Like the memorials at the death camps, something needs to remind us that the people who birthed us committed atrocities in the banality of existence that Hannah Adrent described so accurately. Many southerners took part in lynching and violent riots. Many of their neighbors stood by while this happened. The rest of the country allowed this to happen so long as their lives were not disturbed.
perhaps we need museums that would interpret these artifacts of repression. But perhaps the statues of Stalin and Lenin should have stayed, reminding the Russians that there could be a Putin.
Years ago, I went to Kentucky, where part of my family lived, to gather stories for a project that went into the Indiana University folklore archives. While I was there, I interviewed a history teacher who was working on a book about the hanging of a fellow named Elmer Hill. He was a mentally challenged black fellow, and when a little white girl was brutally assaulted and murdered, her parents pointed the finger at Hill, with no evidence whatsoever except that Hill was the local Boo Radley. Hill was quickly jailed and then spirited away to another jail, dressed as a woman, to avoid a lynch mob. The mob learned his whereabouts, however, and took him from the jail to the woods, where Hill was hanged. The teacher had a picture of the hanging, and he gave me a copy. And when I showed it to my grandmother, there was her father at the front of the mob.
I don’t think statues of Hitler or any of his minions are displayed in front of public buildings in Germany. Museums, which is what Auschwitz’s is now, are an appropriate way to make sure that history is not forgotten. Public display implies honorable service to the public.
“These statues should remind us that we were and still are sinners.”
Ya gotta know this is coming from me: Horse manure!
The xtian concept of humans as flawed is just one of the many lies and deceits that have been propagated to enable xtian churches to provide a “service” (usually for a fee of sorts) to “cure” those “sinners.”
Hogwash, pure hogwash.
Thanks, Duane. The notion that all people are born with sin, which goes back to St. Augustine, is one of the most ludicrous ones devised by the creators of religions. One can hold the belief that we all can improve ourselves (or improv ourselves, as I like to put it) does not require this concept of innate and universal sinfulness.
BTW, Augustine came up with this idea because he was a sex addict. He LOVED going to the brothels, which really disturbed his mother, Monica (after whom Santa Monica is named). Because he so struggled to overcome this addiction despite his eagerness to be pure before the Lord, he came up with this ridiculous notion that we all inherited Original Sin from Adam and Eve, who did that terrible thing, requiring slave labor and capital punishment–eating a fruit they weren’t supposed to eat.
They taught us that early on in the Catholic church. My initial reaction was, “wait a minute…”
Talk about terrorism…
yup
Tear it down. If it’s offensive to black Americans, that should be good enough.
Or relocate it to a graveyard for Confederate monuments and the failed attempt to set up a separate slave-holding country? Maybe? Or replace the statue at the top of the monument (of the rebel soldier) with that of Harriet Tubman.
I like the idea of a graveyard for this junk. But a curated graveyard telling the whole story in all its ugliness.
In another 100 years, there will still be Southern bigots. Still fighting for slavery.
The alternative, to admit they were wrong then and are wrong now, would require facing reality. And they don’t play that.
there are not just southern bigots. There are bigots enough to go around.
And how blithely we excuse the Southern variety. Of whom approximately zero percent have ever acknowledged what being part of America means.
And at the same time, they never cease calling themselves patriots. Oh, the irony!
They certainly stand up when the military calls! And I mean that as as a very good thing.
Symbols of bigotry should be called out wherever they are. Seeing our common humanity does not appear to be a human strength. That fact makes it even more urgent that we not ignore blatant bigotry.
my point is that all the union helped create this problem, not just southerners. If the country had been serious about creating an equitable society, they would have created a Marshall Plan for the south, elevating all and sparing no expense protecting the freedman completely. Instead, the south was allowed to plunge into a depression that lasted until the expansion of the sunbelt. Like Weimar Germany, a peace was created that punished all (my Tennessee county served in equal numbers for union and confederate armies. Small wonder that little Hitler’s arose and passed on their political genetics to all the Bull Connors across the place.
We think we can bend people to our way lol with the terrible swift sword, but in the end, it’s always the loser that returns from the war strengthened unless his progeny are shown a different road. Look at the Taliban. Look at Iraq. Our only two victories, over Germany and Japan, that really proved revolutionary came at a high price.
After Lincoln was shot, it seems that the North couldn’t “move on” quickly enough.
There should have been a reconciliation, but it never came. Of course, this is all quite easy for ME to say.
Many, many of the Founders were Southern: James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, to name just a few. And they had no intention of giving up their livelihood. I don’t think they were horrible people. They were certainly brilliant. But it’s too easy to say they should have done something better. It’s too easy to denounce them.
I probably had ancestors who fought on both sides. There is an excellent chance that bigotry was not confined to those who fought for the South. Witness the difficulty we have had moving past our worst instincts even now. My point was that we need to own our biases and work to move beyond them even though it seems to be a Sisyphean effort.
I have heard some pretty bigoted stuff in New England country club locker rooms.
Ah, yes. Replceitism (made up word), when the opportunity is to begin inculcating humanism instead giving cause to sustaining racism.
I believe MLK Jr was a profound but greatly unrecognized systems thinker who deeply understood, and actually showed us, that racist minds of any color that harbor racism, which is colorblind, cannot know themselves without help from the outside. That by forcefully attacking such racist minds only incites them to want to double-down on sustaining racism. (“Push a system and it will push back.”) That “Non-violence” applied to an area (system) where racism expressed itself had the best chance of gaining entry into the area (system) so that, once inside, racist minds there might be helped to begin knowing themselves with little or understated awareness they were being helped. (Minimal pushback from the system.)
Unfortunately, like white supremacy, “Black Power” of the 60s and 70s lacked MLK Jr’s systems thinking wisdom. So, Black Power soon had Non-violence for lunch. A legacy waste product from Black Power having had Non-violence for lunch is the belief that by replacing something “White,” like a Confederate symbol, with something “Black,” like a Black historical symbol, achieves “social justice equity” and DEI, when, in reality, such competitive replacement actions merely contribute to sustaining racism in the most accommodating and ardent racist minds of whatever color, however concealed, and however thought intelligent.
So, Roy’s perspective here at the top is well-taken.
Ed Johnson, funny you should mention it. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey just signed an “anti-diversity” bill into law. CBK
https://truthout.org/articles/alabama-governor-kay-ivey-signs-educational-gag-order-into-law/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=f95149460d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_11_16_07_58_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-e6daf26d84-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
Thanks,Ed
correction: Replaceitism, not Replceitism.
I am totally not following this argument, Ed.
Getting rid of symbols of extreme racism sustains racism? I suppose that, on that logic, stopping drinking fosters alcoholism.
The NC appellate court decision was handed down by three Republican judges, one of whom (Judge Chris Dillon) replaced another (Judge Donna Stroud) as the court of appeals chief judge in a recent shake-up, apparently because Stroud was not partisan enough for Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby a member of the Federalist Society, who was elected in 2020 by 401 votes out of nearly 5 1/2 million that were cast.
In a Facebook post several years back, the North Carolina Republican Party noted that Judge Dillon “has drafted over 700 opinions and continues to display conservative values in protecting the rule of law in our state.”
In his Alamance County Confederate Monument decision, Judge Dillion wrote that “The record conclusively shows that the Monument is a monument located on public property which commemorates military service that is part of North Carolina’s history. In so concluding, we note our federal government recognizes that service in the Confederate Army qualifies as ‘military service.’…We further note that North Carolina recognizes ‘Confederate Memorial Day’ as a legal public holiday.”
Therefore the judges agreed, the Confederate statue is protected by state law.
It’s true that North Carolina celebrates a “Confederate Memorial Day.”
Here’s NCPedia:
“Confederate Memorial Day has been observed in North Carolina and throughout the South on different days and under various names since 1866. In that first year after the close of the Civil War, communities across the South hosted ceremonies at grave sites, on courthouse lawns, and at state capitols. That was the beginning of an annual tradition observed with memorial addresses by dignitaries, band concerts, the laying of wreaths and flowers, picnics, and community meals. Through the years, some southern states began to neglect this custom, but in many places it has continued.”
“In North Carolina 10 May, the date of the death of Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, was originally named by the members of the Wake County Ladies’ Memorial Association as the day of remembrance. On that first Confederate Memorial Day, the citizens of Wake County secretly made their way to Raleigh‘s Oakwood Cemetery, since the Reconstruction military governor had threatened to shoot anyone who gathered for such a purpose. Nevertheless, Raleigh citizens assembled then, as they have every year since, to honor North Carolinians who wore the Confederate uniform.”
And it’s also true that the federal government “recognizes” Confederate “military service”, sort of. Here’s PolitiFact on that, which concludes that “Congress eventually afforded Confederate veterans many of the benefits awarded to other U.S. military veterans, but no qualifying veteran ever actually received aid from the federal government (outside the placement of headstones).”
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/nov/15/sid-miller/did-congressional-acts-give-confederate-veterans-f/
More importantly is this, also from NCPedia, about the monument:
“At the top of the column is a stalwart Confederate soldier at parade rest looking north. He steps forward with his left foot while resting the butt of his rifle near his feet. The column is engraved with a pair of Confederate flags. At the bottom of the column is a pedestal on which four round orbs sit…Inside the concrete base of the monument is a copper box containing the names of 1,100 Confederate soldiers in the Civil War from Alamance and the names of contributors to the monument’s fund. It also holds a number of confederate relics including Confederate money, papers of that day, several old coins and the names of the members of the Graham Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy.”
Inscription:North face: TO COMMEMORATE WITH GRATEFUL LOVE THE PATRIOTISM, VALOR, AND DEVOTION TO DUTY, OF THE BRAVE SOLDIERS OF ALAMANCE COUNTY, THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED THROUGH THE EFFORTS OF THE GRAHAM CHAPTER, UNITED DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY / OUR CONFEDERATE SOLDIERSSouth face: ON FAME’S ETERNAL CAMPING GROUND, THEIR SILENT TENTS ARE SPREAD, AND GLORY GUARDS, WITH SOLEMN ROUND, THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD. / 1861. C. S. A. 1865.
East face: FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH, THEY ARE CROWNED WITH IMMORTAL GLORY.
West face: CONQUERED THEY CAN NEVER BE, WHOSE SPIRITS AND WHOSE SOULS ARE FREE.
And Paul Newby, the North Carolina Chief Justice?
He belongs to a conservative Baptist church where he teaches Sunday school and where they believe that “the Bible was written by men divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit and is the record of God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is the perfect treasure for divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and its contents are without error. It will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions are tried.” Facing South online magazine noted that Newby is a “a former prosecutor who has denied the existence of racism in North Carolina’s criminal justice system.”
Are we going to have to whip their asses again?
Looks like!
There is much celebrating about this in the Kremlin.