I’ve talked about Wilson County’s courthouse monument before. There’s renewed pressure to remove it, but its apologists claim it’s not a Confederate monument at all. Rather, it commemorates veterans of all wars.
I’ll let y0u be the judge.
Does the deceptively simple motif below seem familiar? It’s a Saint Andrew’s cross, a notable element of Confederate national and battle flags.
It’s engraved an astounding TEN TIMES around the monument, including the two locations below. (The rough indentation on the front of the plinth? It’s where the word COLORED was gouged out in the early 1960s. There was a water fountain where that little pyramid now sits. Isn’t that reason enough to get this thing out of the public eye?)
Two more. And so on.
The monument went up on Veterans Day 1926, paid for by the John W. Dunham Chapter of United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Thomas Hadley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. It’s on public property, steps away from the county courthouse, a building symbolizing the power and authority of local government.
Recent North Carolina law makes retiring these relics difficult — but not impossible. I urge Wilson County Commissioners to find a way.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2023.
FACT: “The rough indentation on the front of the plinth? It’s where the word COLORED was gouged out in the early 1960s. There was a water fountain where that little pyramid now sits.”
How do I know the information above is correct ? As a little girl, born 1952 in Wilson, I drank from that very ” colored” fountain.
These bricks are relics from a very demeaning past…lip stick on a pig ? …..its still a pig with the same stench despite some efforts to try and rename it whatever it was never intended to be.
THIS RELIC IS DEAD. REMOVE IT NOW.
Move to build a true monument to the brave men and women of our armed forces who sacrificed their lives for our benefit.
Ironically, such a monument, in the form of a grouping of granite pillars, already exists at the other end of the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. At best, then, this monument is a redundancy. And one that has worn out whatever welcome some gave it.
U are correct Sister Rashid. On the 4th of July and Veterans day the supporters of the daughters of the confederacy would parade on horse back under the guise of veterans of foreign wars that wore all the regalia accept for the capirote head covering which closely reminded ME of members of the triple K organization.
Having been born in Wilson I know too well the feeling looking at fountains carved “colored” and “white” on this “monument”. As a kid I would sometimes drink that “white” water then run-like-hell.