Deadline for public comment on removing confederate statues was April 12
If you, like many in the black community statewide, feel strongly about moving statues paying tribute to the Confederacy from state government grounds, then you have until midnight tonight, April 12, to electronically submit them to the N.C. Historical Commission’s Confederate Monument Study Committee.
The online address to obtain the form is https://www.ncdcr.gov/comment-relocation-monuments.
Once you fully fill out the form, which includes your name, address, and comments on whether you are for, or against removing all Confederate statues and memorials from state government grounds, you simply click the submit button to turn it in online.
You must submit the completed form no later than 12 midnight tonight, April 12.
Thus far, over 4,600 comments – both pro and con – have been submitted by the public to the study commission for consideration. During a public hearing last month held by the committee, about 60 people attended, with the majority expressing objection to removal of any of the Confederate memorials.
There are three statues/memorials in question:
*The 75-foot Capitol Confederate Monument in front of the State Capitol Building, which commemorates the Confederate dead. It was erected in 1895.
*The Henry Lawson Wyatt Monument commemorating the first Confederate soldier killed during the Civil War “Battle of Bethel.” The monument was erected in 1912.
*And the Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy. It was erected in 1912.
Shortly after the racial violence last August in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the
controversial removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in a local park, and a group of activists toppled a statue of a Confederate officer in front of the old Durham courthouse in downtown.
Gov. Roy Cooper proposed removing all Confederate memorials from state government grounds. He asked the N.C. Historical Commission to look into how to do so, while adhering to a 2015 law passed by the Republican-led NC General Assembly, making it difficult to remove “objects of remembrance.”
The commission, after receiving the public comments about removing Confederate memorials from state grounds by midnight tonight, will then solicit legal opinions from Wake Forest University, NCCU Law School, UNC-Chapel Hill Law School, Elon University and Duke University law schools.
The full commission will then meet in May to hear the results of the public comments, and other considerations, in a special report from the Confederate Monument Study Committee.
