GRAHAM, N.,C.: The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP filed a lawsuit Tuesday looking for the removing of a Confederate monument which stands in entrance of a county courthouse the place protests have been staged for a number of years and which intensified final yr after the dying of George Floyd.
Filed in Alamance County, the lawsuit names members of the Alamance County Board of Commissioners as defendants. Commission Chairman John Paisley didnt instantly reply to an electronic mail request for remark Tuesday.
Specifically, the monument exalts the causes of slavery, secession, and white supremacy. It causes specific ache to Black residents. And it wastes taxpayer {dollars} on safety prices that shall be pointless as soon as the statue topped by an armed Confederate soldier is gone,” the North Carolina NAACP stated in a information launch. “The monument stands illegally because the state constitution outlaws government action that denies equal protection, exhibits racial discrimination, and squanders public money.”
The lawsuit alleges that county officers have refused to take away the monument from in entrance of the Alamance County Courthouse in Graham, which is 55 miles (90 kilometers) northwest of Raleigh.
The Rev. William J. Barber II, former NAACP state chapter president, stated the Alamance County monument and lots of others throughout the South have been erected within the early twentieth century not within the aftermath of the Civil War amid a time of lynchings of African Americans, in addition to the formation of coalitions just like the NAACP to fight racism.
“These monuments represent a form of political, social, and cultural intimidation and sanction by the county commissioner, city council, and state legislature of that time to harass Black and white people who were committed to equal justice under the law for all people, Barber said.
According to the lawsuit, Alamance County was a center for Black political participation at the end of the Civil War. Among those participating was Wyatt Outlaw, a native of the county and an escaped slave who fought in the Union Army. According to a database of lynchings kept by the University of North Carolina, Outlaw was lynched on Feb. 26, 1870, by members of the Ku Klux Klan after he was dragged from his home. The men charged with his murder were freed in 1873.
The Confederate monument was erected in 1914 on courthouse grounds across from the site where Outlaw was hanged, the lawsuit says, adding that the county accepted the monument as a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The lawsuit cites a newspaper account of the dedication ceremony, in which local Ku Klux Klan leader Jacob A. Long said the purpose of the monument was to recall the achievements of the great and good of our own race and blood …
The lawsuit also cites a letter from Alamance County Manager Bryan Hagood, who wrote last June that the monument posed a life-or-death threat to public safety because of heightened emotions on both sides of the issue.
We are currently relying on our Sheriff’s Office to protect the Confederate memorial as it is County property,” Hagood stated. “I imagine that it’s going to come to a degree the place the Deputies must select to make use of probably lethal drive in the midst of doing so.
Hagood additionally wrote that he suggested county commissioners that the monument must be relocated.
Hundreds protested in July close to the monument, marching 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from Burlington into downtown Graham, the place they heard speeches calling for an finish to racial oppression.
The monument has been the goal of protests for a number of years, and calls to convey it down have intensified for the reason that May 2020 police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis sparked nationwide demonstrations. Numerous different Confederate monuments throughout the South have been toppled or relocated in recent times.
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