Salisbury approves plan to remove divisive Confederate statue. Here’s what’s next
Salisbury City Council unanimously agreed late Tuesday to remove a 111-year-old Confederate monument that the police chief deemed a public safety threat.
The decision came as calls continue to grow across the Charlotte region and nationally to relocate similar Confederate statues and markers seen by many as symbols of racism and hate.
Attention on removing such monuments has been spurred on by protests for the Black Lives Matter movement and against police brutality following the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by Minnesota police.
The Fame statue on West Innes Street in Salisbury recently sparked another round of heated protests during which someone fired shots in the air and police in riot gear used tear gas, council member Brian Miller said before Tuesday’s vote. An officer was hurt, he said.
The Salisbury Police Department arrested two people — one white and one black — in connection with the gunfire as two separate groups of protesters gathered near the statue, WBTV reported. And paint has been thrown on the statue twice as well, according to the station.
“It has become a flash point,” Miller said of the bronze statue dedicated in 1909. “I’m not willing to trade one person’s life just to keep the statue where it is.”
The city has no official cost estimate to move the statue, spokeswoman Linda McElroy said.
The statue depicts the muse Fame holding a dying Confederate soldier with one arm, and a laurel wreath held high in the other hand.
The council’s vote at Tuesday’s virtual meeting followed 3 1/2 hours of public comments read aloud by a city official. About two-thirds of the estimated 100 speakers favored keeping the statue where it is. Others said the statute was racially divisive and needed to be moved.
“This is more than just a bronze statue,” a local minister told the council. “It is a symbol of white supremacy. If we are not able to move (the monument,) we will not be able to make movement in becoming a more equitable community.”
The city would pay both to move the statue to the Old Lutheran Cemetery on North Lee Street and for a new foundation at the cemetery, according to the agreement approved by the council Tuesday.
The local United Daughters of the Confederacy, Robert F. Hoke chapter, owns the statue and would pay to maintain the monument after its move, according to the proposed agreement.
A $55,000 pledge
Descendants of UDC members who had the statue built have pledged $55,000 for such amenities as an 8-foot-tall wrought iron fence that would stretch 80 feet in the cemetery, Mayor Karen Alexander said.
UDC leaders had approached the city about reaching an agreement to relocate the statue to the cemetery, City Attorney Graham Corriher told the council before its vote. The UDC has 10 days to sign the agreement.
It could take several months for the statue to finally end up in the cemetery, as the city would have to conduct a site evaluation, including to confirm no graves are there, the mayor said. In the interim, the city would pay to store the statue in a warehouse, according to the proposed agreement.
City officials have not said how soon the statue could be moved into storage before eventually relocating to the cemetery.
The cemetery opened in 1768 and includes 175 Confederate solider tombstones that were installed in 1996, according to WBTV. Salisbury is about 45 miles north of Charlotte.
Calls for change
The Salisbury statue is among more than 95 monuments honoring the Confederacy across North Carolina, according to state records. Most were dedicated between 1900 and 1925 during the era of Jim Crow, the Observer previously reported.
In Cornelius, the pastors of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church told the Observer last week they want a Confederate statue moved from outside their church.
The church owns neither the statue nor the land on which it sits, pastors Jonathan and Angela Marlowe said. The monument has been owned and maintained by the Mt. Zion Monument Association since it was installed in 1909, the pastors said.
In a statement to the Observer, association chairman Donald Archer said the group is reviewing what to do with the monument.
Meanwhile, in Charlotte, Corine Mack, head of Charlotte’s NAACP chapter, said two Confederate monuments in the city should be removed — a 1977 statue owned by the city in city-owned Elmwood Cemetery, and a Confederate memorial off Kings Drive owned by Mecklenburg County.”
No one has formally called on county commissioners to remove the monument, and commissioners have not recently discussed the topic, a county spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The Elmwood Cemetery monument originally stood outside Old City Hall in uptown before then-City Manager Ron Carlee had it moved in 2015, the Observer reported at the time.
This story was originally published June 17, 2020 at 12:32 PM.