Confederate Statue Protest in Edenton, NC.
On Saturday, 26 February 2022, citizens gathered at the confederate statue located at the end of South Broad Street to protest what the group highlighted as a lack of progress and clarity over the timeline for the statues removal.
Rod Phillips of Edenton who organized the protest, highlighted that while the town council has made a decision to remove the statue, the decision lacked timing of the move and what the plan would be for the space once the statue was removed. He indicated that the protest would happen every Saturday until the statue is removed.
The Edenton Gazette reached out to Hackney High, who is the chairman of the Administrative Committee responsible for the planning and coordination with regards to the confederate statue. We were updated by a council member that Hackney High would present the plan to the entire town council at its upcoming March 8th town council meeting.
The Edenton Gazette reached out to the following town leaders, Hackney High, Jimmy Mayor Jimmy Stallings, Sam Dixon, Roger Coleman and Craig Miller with the following questions: “What is the current timeline for the statues removal and where will it be placed or moved to?”
Keeping in mind that the Edenton Human Relations Council (HRC) made its recommendation in a report to the Administrative Committee of the Edenton Town Council on August 23, 2021 following a 7-6 vote on June 23, 2021 in favor of relocating the monument.
From the report; “The recommendation to the Town Council is to move the monument to Sixth Street,
Edenton Human Relations Commission Report, August 16, 2021
on green space that is part of the Town’s property which includes the Water Treatment Plant and Beaver Hill Cemetery. Limitations to its relocation include that it must remain inside Edenton’s city limits and also that, according to N. C. Gen. Stat. Sec. 100-2(b), “An object of remembrance may not be relocated to a museum, cemetery or mausoleum unless it was originally placed there”.”
A brief history of the monument and national racial equality protests during the statues relocation.
The monument was first installed on the court house green June 3, 1904 with the bronze soldier being added on May 10, 1909, the solider facing north. It was moved it’s present location on South Broad Street in June 1961.
The civil war ended on April 9, 1865 and memorials around this time typically were placed in cemeteries to mourn those lost in the war.
Mark Elliott, a history professor at University of North Carolina, Greensboro highlighted. “Eventually they started to build [Confederate] monuments,” he says. “The vast majority of them were built between the 1890s and 1950s, which matches up exactly with the era of Jim Crow segregation.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s research, the biggest spike was between 1900 and the 1920s. – https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments
Racial equality efforts became better organized in the 1950s and progressed into the 1960s. President Lyndon B. Johnson successfully pushed through the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, and a number of other groundbreaking events unfolded between 1960 and 1964, the span covered by the linked timeline, leading up the tumultuous period of 1965 to 1969. To see a timeline of these events, you can go to ThoughtCo.com. It wasn’t until the 1968-69 school year that the Edenton and Chowan County schools merged and desegregated.
In the news around this timeframe were the Freedom Riders, a group of seven Black and six White activist who left Washington DC to ride protest through southern states in May 1961. The Edenton statue was moved to a more prominent location June 1961.
Dr. Martin Luther King held a rally at the local Armory in December 1962 on the invitation of Golden Asro Frinks, Edenton’s most prominent civil rights activist during this timeframe. Dr. Martin Luther King returned in 1966.
