VOLUME 97 - NUMBER 23 DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA -SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 2018 TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 50 CENTS
Report: 110 Confederate
monuments removed in
US since 2015
By Jay Reeves
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - It took generations to erect all the
nation’s Confederate monuments, and a new report shows they’re
being removed at a pace of about three each month.
The study - released Monday by the Southern Poverty Law
Center - shows that 110 Confederate monuments have been removed
nationwide since 2015, when a shooting at a black church in South
Carolina energized a movement against such memorials.
The number - which includes schools and roads that have been
renamed in California, a repurposed Confederate holiday in Georgia,
plus rebel flags and monuments that have been taken down in
Alabama, Louisiana and elsewhere - represents a relative handful
compared with the more than 1,700 memorials that remain to hail the
Southern “lost cause.”
But the change is notable considering that removing such
memorials wasn’t widely discussed until the killing of nine black
people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, said
Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal activist
organization based in Montgomery that monitors extremism. White
supremacist Dylann Roof has been sentenced to death for the 2015
attack.
After the Charleston shooting, photos surfaced of Roof posing
with the Confederate battle flag, helping to change the national
dialogue.
“I think it kind of signifies something monumental,” said Beirich,
director of the organization’s Intelligence Project. “I think people
are finally willing to confront the history and come to terms with it.”
Many of the Confederate monuments that are now controversial
were erected in the early 1900s by groups composed of women and
veterans. Some honor generals or soldiers; others bear inscriptions
that critics say wrongly gloss over slavery as a reason for the war or
portray the Confederate cause as noble.
The Old South monuments are supported by groups including the
Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is erecting new memorials even
as others are removed.
“They’re taking them down, and we’re putting them up,” said
Thomas V. Strain Jr., commander in chief of the organization. He
said the group isn’t tracking monument removals or name changes,
but to him, 110 “seems a little high.”
Members have raised two giant Confederate “mega-flags” on
private property and erected four monuments in Alabama alone this
year, Strain said, and they’re asking to place a new Confederate
monument outside the courthouse in Colbert County, in northwest
Alabama. Commissioners are considering the request.
The organization also is building a new headquarters that will
include The National Confederate Museum in Columbia, Tennessee.
The organization, on its website promoting the project, said the
museum will counter attempts by opponents “to ban any and all
things Confederate through their ideological fascism.”
The museum will tell the “Southern side” of the war, Strain said.
“It’s not just dedicated to the soldiers, it’s dedicated to the wives
and children who had to endure that five years of hell also,” he said.
“We’ll have Southern uniforms there, not Union uniforms. We’ll
have Southern artillery shells, not Northern ones.”
Beirich said the law center’s list of monument removals was
compiled through news accounts, tips and crowd-sourcing sites that
let people make online reports.
Both in tallying removals and remaining memorials, the group
counted only monuments that “glorify” the Confederacy and didn’t
consider historical markers that denote specific events or sites with a
link to the past, such as information signs at battlefields, Beirich said.
While the organization lists 1,730 Confederate monuments
nationwide, Beirich said there’s no doubt a lot more exist.
“I am sure we have missed many,” she said.
Without statewide
consensus, partial
judicial remaps advance
By Gary D. Robertson
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Republican lawmakers are advancing
fragments of a statewide remapping of North Carolina’s judicial
election districts in hopes of passing them before candidate filing for
judges begins in just over two weeks.
A House committee voted late June 1 to expand a measure approved
this week by the Senate that redrew Mecklenburg County judicial
districts to include changes in Wake County and two Wilmington-
area counties. The same panel also agreed to separate legislation
reworking judicial or prosecutorial districts covering more than a
dozen other eastern and southern Piedmont counties.
A Senate committee also scheduled a meeting for Monday to
consider another judicial district measure.
House and Senate members have studied since last fall potential
rewrites of election boundaries for Superior Court and District Court
seats, as well as the county groupings for elected district attorneys.
Although the full House approved a statewide plan last October,
Republican lawmakers from both chambers have since struggled to
agree on the finer details. And some senators have been more inclined
to consider doing away with the traditional head-to-head judicial
elections, but there’s also no agreement on what should replace them.
Rep. David Lewis, the House Rules Committee chairman
considering the legislation June 1, said he anticipated neither a
statewide redistricting bill nor a “merit selection” measure would
move before this year’s session ends, likely this month.
Rep. Justin Burr, a Stanly County Republican and the chief
proponent of statewide redistricting, shepherded changes to the
smaller counties in Friday’s (June 1) committee.
“Rather than the big bite of the apple that we’ve been pushing
for, this takes some smaller steps, but it continues to update and
modernize and invest in the courts,” Burr said.
Period cooking demonstrations will be part of the Juneteenth Program at
Stagville.
Historic Stagville Celebrates
153rd Anniversary of
Emancipation for Juneteenth
More than 900 people were freed at Stagville Plantation, one of the state’s
largest, at the end of the Civil War in 1865. Visit Historic Stagville Saturday, June
9, noon to 5 p.m., to discover the story of the end of slavery in North Carolina. The
Juneteenth celebration will include performances, historic cooking demonstrations
and interactive activities for all ages.
Cheyney McKnight, historian and founder of Not Your Mama’s History, will lead
a historic cooking demonstration. She will recreate festive meals cooked by freed
people in celebration of their freedom.
Visitors can visit original slave quarters, and see how families renovated and
transformed those houses in freedom. Civil War reenactors of the 2nd Regiment,
U.S. Colored Troops, will capture the spirit of those who fought for freedom.
Historic interpreter Caroline Evans will perform dramatic stories about the origins
of Juneteenth and the reunion of families separated in slavery.
Visitors can try woodworking, fence building, or gardening, and see how craftsmen
used their skills in freedom. Children can make a fingerprint medallion to take home,
just like the fingerprints enslaved craftsmen left in the Stagville bricks.
The Friends of Oberlin Village will present artifacts and stories about the
freedmen’s community in Raleigh, including their connection to the Stagville
plantation. Educators from the Historic Russell School will share the story of African
American education after 1865, and highlight the history of the local Rosenwald
Schools. For a hands-on lesson in school history, experience a schoolhouse lesson
in one of the historic houses. Learn what education would have been like for freed
families eager to learn!
Although slavery ended in April, Stagville celebrates Emancipation at Juneteenth,
the traditional June 19 holiday that commemorates when the last enslaved people in
Galveston, Tex., were informed that they were free.
For additional information about this event, please call (919) 620-0120. Historic Stagville is located
at 5828 Old Oxford Highway, Durham, N.C., and is part of the Division of State Historic Sites within the
N.C. Department ofNatural and Cultural Resources.
12 protesters
arrested
at North
Carolina
statehouse
By Jonathan Drew
RALEIGH (AP) - Twelve
protesters were led away in
zip ties May 29 as part of a
demonstration calling for social
justice on issues ranging from
gun control to poverty relief at
North Carolina’s legislature.
About 100 people gathered
near North Carolina’s statehouse
to hear a speech by the Rev.
William Barber, leader of
the revived Poor People’s
Campaign. After the speech,
12 demonstrators were arrested
and charged with misdemeanor
trespassing after marching
into a nearby building where
lawmakers were debating the
state budget, General Assembly
Police Chief Martin Brock said.
Barber used a wide-ranging
speech to decry North Carolina
legislators’ budget priorities as
part of his campaign’s third week
of demonstrations at statehouses
around the country. Barber
gained nationwide attention for
his nonviolent protests as head of
North Carolina’s NAACP before
moving on to head a revival of
the campaign, which was first
launched during the civil rights
era.
‘They are more interested in
arresting protesters and blocking
the voice of the people - they are
more interested in that - than they
are interested in providing health
care,” he said of North Carolina
lawmakers. ‘They are more
interested in arresting protesters
than they are in providing living
wages.”
After the speech, dozens
marched into the Legislative
Office Building nearby, where
a joint House and Senate
committee was holding a hearing
on tax portions of the state
budget. Barber wasn’t among
those who went inside.
After a few demonstrators
made it into the hearing, the rest
of the protesters stood in the
hallway and recited loud chants
including: ‘What do we want?
Justice! When do we want it?
Now!”
The protest caused a delay
of about 20 minutes in the
committee hearing.
Soon, several protesters were
led out of the hearing room,
one-by-one, in white zip ties
by police officers. An officer
then used his bullhorn to warn
those in the hallway to disperse.
More were led away in zip ties
after repeated warnings, for a
total of 12 arrests. The rest of
the protesters eventually left
peacefully.
In two prior North Carolina
protests this year, about
60 people were arrested
while demonstrating against
Republican policies in the state.
The Poor People’s Campaign
plans a total of six weeks of
nonviolent demonstrations at
statehouses around the country
and in Washington, D.C.
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