America is rethinking Confederate symbols. Will Republicans let NC do the same?

In Birmingham, Ala., home of Bull Conner, a five-story monument that honored Confederate soldiers and sailors was removed by workers with a mandate from the mayor and relative silence from the Republican-led state legislature.

In Richmond, Va., home of the Confederacy, the governor and mayor announced they would remove the Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue, where George Floyd protesters tagged the statues with messages reflecting the burden of decades of racial and economic inequality.

We are living an extraordinary moment right now. Mississippi is rethinking the stars and bars in its flag. NASCAR is removing the Confederate flag from its events. Cities and counties and states are becoming emboldened — or at least awoken — and having new conversations about symbols of racism and the pain they bring.

In North Carolina, we have dozens of such symbols — monuments and statues across the state that city and county leaders would like to revisit. But unlike most other states, many of our local leaders can’t have conversations about what’s best for their communities. In 2015, the Republican-controlled General Assembly approved a law that banned removing an “object of remembrance” on public property that “commemorates an event, a person, or military service that is part of North Carolina’s history.” Local governments can move monuments that belong to them, but decisions on all other monuments and statues are made by a state-appointed monuments commission, which says its hands are tied by the 2015 law.

That needs to change. Especially now.

Republican lawmakers need to let North Carolinians participate in the healing and uniting we’re seeing in so many other places. Specifically, that means N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, who in the wake of George Floyd’s death last month, said: “Recent events have created a unique opportunity to address long-standing issues facing our society.”

That statement came in a news release announcing the creation of a state task force on justice, law enforcement, and community relations, but Moore and every member-to-be of that task force know that such words ring hollow if the state persists in protecting symbols that were constructed to justify the segregation and inequity Moore says he wants to address.

In response to an Editorial Board question this week about statues and monuments, Berger spokesperson Pat Ryan said: “Though no senator has approached him recently with an alternative proposal, Sen. Berger continues to be open hearing the case for a different policy on this.” Democrats and Gov. Roy Cooper, who called for removal of Confederate monuments on the capitol grounds three years ago, should take him up on the offer.

Battles over Confederate symbols have long divided North Carolina, but the 2015 law was passed in the wake of renewed discussions about monuments following the deadly shootings of nine black members of a Charleston church by white supremacist Dylann Roof. In response, S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley removed the Confederate flag from the state capitol, calling it “a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past.” N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory showed no such courage, complaining that North Carolina’s monument bill was an “overreach into local decision making” but signing it anyway.

The law has since shackled N.C. communities that want to rid themselves of the distress the monuments bring. That includes the UNC system, which has suffered years-long torment surrounding Silent Sam, a statue topped by protesters on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in 2018. Last year, the UNC Board of Governors decided to pay millions of dollars to a Confederate sympathy group to take the statue off the UNC System’s hands. That deal was struck down by a judge in February.

Now, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Americans are examining race and inequity in a new and profound way, and they’re deciding that one step toward eliminating division is to remove the symbols that cause it.

Do North Carolina Republicans want our state to be part of this promising moment, or are they going to embrace the past once again?

This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 12:23 PM with the headline "America is rethinking Confederate symbols. Will Republicans let NC do the same?."