For example:
Winston-Salem's Confederate monument should no longer be ignored
Quote:
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...The late Walter Marshall, a black man and a longtime county commissioner accustomed to being a voice in the wilderness, wanted the statue removed or relocated as a condition of the sale.
“The Confederacy was not legal, as far as I’m concerned,” Marshall said at the time. “It was a form of treason. You don’t recognize people who did not recognize the country as being legitimate.”
The United Daughters of the Confederacy thought otherwise, however. The group claimed ownership and put its collective foot down.
“The UDC, back in 1905, raised the money to have that built,” said Cindy Casey, a past president of the local chapter. “The county wrote in the newspaper a resolution thanking the UDC for giving the monument for citizens to enjoy. ... The statue represents men who died in the Civil War. It has nothing to do with race or racism.”...
...Casey, who is no longer with the UDC, said that statues and monuments are a very difficult subject. “I absolutely abhor white supremacy,” she said. “It has no place in our community.”
Down the block, at the vigil, a 70-year-old Air Force veteran named Woodrow Haney admitted that he hadn’t thought much about the Confederate monument in his hometown.
“I’m a black man. To black people, it’s about slavery and oppression,” he said. “I’ll say this about (Confederate monuments) … I hope they move all those statues way out in a park somewhere so that people who want to see them can and they’re not right out in the middle of everything.”
Ron Pardue, a white man who lives in Clemmons, said much the same thing. Perhaps it is time to move such statues and monuments. Maybe they belong in cemeteries or near Civil War battlefields, and not smack in the middle of a burgeoning, modern downtown.
“Symbols change over time, or at least our understanding of them does, and I am no longer comfortable with it where it is,” Pardue wrote in an email.
As things stand now, ownership of the monument is still claimed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and it sits on ground in an easement granted by the county when it sold the old courthouse to a developer.
Further complicating matters, the legislature, in 2015, passed a law making it more difficult to remove or relocate such monuments.
“It’s murky, at best,” said Dudley Watts, the county manager. “A lot of people have tried to tip-toe around it.”
Maybe it’s time we do something about it. Maybe it’s time to stop treating the monument like Uncle Earl’s lawn jockey. Pardue, and others like him, think so.
“My opinion on the memorials is evolving,” he said. “Charlottesville was a tipping point for me. Seeing the battle flag used next to (the) Nazi swastika made it crystal clear.”
The Confederate monument, nestled next to the old Forsyth County Courthouse, sat mostly alone and largely ignored this weekend. Perhaps it’s time we stop looking away.
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