NC town moving Confederate monument for second time

EDENTON, N.C. (WAVY) — The Confederate monument that has stood for more than 116 years in the waterfront town is on the move for the second time.

Late Saturday night, contractors dismantled the monument from its more-than-60-year home at the end of South Broad Street and sent it to storage, ahead of planned reinstatement at the Veterans Memorial Park, according to Edenton Mayor W. Hackney High.

The town had been planning for the relocation for more than three years, however, it was the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the move that lead the town to act.

In a letter to the community, High called for “a spirit of unity and mutual respect” in the wake of the decision he characterized as a true compromise.

The monument will no longer be in a prominent location and it won’t be destroyed.

“This issue has been deeply emotional and challenging for the town council and many of our
citizens,” High wrote. “The volume and intensity of social media commentary underscore how strongly people feel on both sides.”

The effort to relocate the monument came about like many did in the South.

Nearly every municipality in the WAVY-TV viewing area had a Confederate monument. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, hundreds were erected during the height of the “Lost Cause” movement.

Edenton’s 26-foot tall memorial was originally unveiled in 1909 and faced the old Chowan County Courthouse on the corner of Court Street and King Street. In 1961, it was moved to its location at the end of Broad Street, the community’s main business district.

In both cases, the Confederate soldier faced north, as was the case for most Confederate monuments.

“Memorials to the Confederacy were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life,” the American Historical Association said in a 2017 statement.

Following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a Derek Chauvin, a white, now-former Minneapolis Police officer, a radical reconning occurred across the country. African Americans labeled the memorials to the “Confederate dead” as symbols of oppression.

Six monuments were moved by 2021 in Hampton Roads alone after Virginia law changed, allowing for their relocation.

In North Carolina, laws prohibiting their relocation remain in place, however.

Edenton’s Town Council voted in February 2022 to move forward with the relocation to Veterans Memorial Park, located three blocks from the current location.

“To those who claim we are ‘erasing history,’ that is a misinformed view,” High said. “The monument is not being removed — it is being relocated. In doing so, we are not erasing history. We are preserving and protecting it.”