On its way to the seven men and women of the Wilson County Commission. They’ve been grappling with the Confederate memorial issue for several years. Reaching consensus could not have been easy, nor finding a solid way to effectuate their decision, but here we are. The monument, with its capped segregated water fountains, Confederate battle flag, and ten Saint Andrew’s crosses, has been removed from courthouse grounds.
Wilson City Council, you’re on the clock.
My mama texted me the photo:
I ran to the Wilson Times online:
Look at God.
Also this week, a rally in downtown Wilson to demand removal of the Confederate monument on the grounds of the county courthouse. For more about the structure, see here, here, here, here and here.
Wilson Daily Times, 3 May 2024.
[Update, 11 May 2024: days after this protest, the Confederate battle flag on the monument was defaced with dark spray paint. The police quickly identified and arrested a 58 year-old white man on misdemeanor property damage charges. Per the Wilson Times: “When asked if the county will clean the monument, Wilson County Manager Ron Hunt said no plans have been made as commissioners continue their research regarding the memorial.” (I’m here for this unbothered response.) Photo below courtesy of the Times‘ 7 May 2024 edition.
More from Thursday’s council meeting. As the figurative credits were rolling on public comments, Glenn Wright focused attention on the Wilson County Memorial Fountain, i.e. the Confederate monument squatting at the center of town in the county courthouse’s front yard. Wilson County Commissioners have been agonizing over this embarrassment for a year and still it sits.
Per the Wilson Times,
Friends, please read that two times. “In those times, people could not read”??? Gaona ran for mayor last fall. Wilson dodged a bullet.
Public comments ended, and Mayor Carlton Stevens started straightening up the papers on his desk, noting, “you all need to go to county meeting” with this. The monument is not the city’s business. Suddenly, Rev. Michael S. Bell, late of “Let the Dead Rest” fame, let fly.
Our direct ancestors, our dead stripped of headstones and desecrated by power poles within the past 30 years? Demand answers about that and you’re accused of creating “animosity and strife.” But a hundred year-old memorial to the Confederacy? Now that really gets his blood boiling.
Don’t mistake me. Wilson County needs to find a way a haul this segregationist relic away from its front door. Or if North Carolina law doesn’t offer a workaround, the County needs to erect signage providing context and plainly stating its original purpose — COLORED and WHITE water fountains and all. But I am put off by Rev. Bell’s indignation about this county matter, yet relative indifference to an issue squarely within the purview of City Council. More than four years have passed since I first reached out to council with questions and concerns about the removal and destruction of Vick Cemetery’s headstones. Since then, not one finger — Bell’s or anybody else’s — has been lifted to investigate this tragedy or mitigate its consequences. Not one council member’s emotional outburst has demanded justice for Vick’s dead and their families.
Wilson County Commission, you’re taking too long to handle your business. Rev. Bell, propose a council proclamation about the monument, then sweep around your own front door.
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, they say, 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.
This ought to be easy. Then again, so should doing right by Vick Cemetery.
The bronze plaque — underneath the crossed flags and between the segregated water fountains — reads: To the valor of Wilson County soldiers. Who really believes the United Daughters of the Confederacy intended in 1926 to honor all Wilson County veterans?
Here are Wilson’s two Confederate monuments. The clock is ticking.
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“Although Confederate monuments are sometimes designated as historic, and while many were erected more than a century ago, the National Trust [for Historic Preservation] supports their removal from our public spaces when they continue to serve the purposes for which many were built—to glorify, promote, and reinforce white supremacy, overtly or implicitly.
“While some have suggested that removal may result in erasing history, we believe that removal may be necessary to achieve the greater good of ensuring racial justice and equality. And their history needs not end with their removal: we support relocation of these monuments to museums or other places where they may be preserved so that their history as elements of Jim Crow and racial injustice can be recognized and interpreted.”
Read National Trust’s full Statement on Confederate Monuments: http://ow.ly/JMUD50AbAuR
Photos, Wilson, June 2020.
