Report: NC has more Confederate monuments than 48 other states

Amid a national push to remove Confederate monuments and rename streets and buildings, the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center released a report Thursday cataloging government-sponsored symbols of the Confederacy.

North Carolina topped the list with 90 Confederate monuments – tied with Georgia for second place in the country behind Virginia, which has 96 monuments.

Add in the places, buildings and roads named for Confederate leaders, and North Carolina has a total of 140 things that honor the losing side of the Civil War.

In the Triangle, Raleigh is home to three monuments, while Pittsboro, Holly Springs, Chapel Hill and Durham each have one.

Wilmington has the state’s highest number of Confederate honors with 14 listings on the report, most of which are streets. The report appears to miss several Confederate street names in Raleigh: The historically black South Park neighborhood near downtown includes Lee Street, Bragg Street and Hoke Street – all named for Confederate generals.

While most of North Carolina’s Confederate symbols date to the early 20th century, a few are more recent. The mountain town of Burnsville installed a monument to Confederate soldiers in 2009 – the state’s newest such monument, according to the report.

Southern Poverty Law Center criticized the prevalence of Confederate tributes. “Public governmental displays of Confederate monuments and other symbols undermine the promise of equality that’s the basis of our democracy,” SPLC President Richard Cohen said in a news release.

But don’t expect North Carolina’s Confederate monuments to come down anytime soon.

Last year, the legislature passed a bill making it harder to remove historical monuments and memorials – including Confederate war memorials. Any local governments seeking to remove “objects of remembrance” on public property will have to first get the legislature to pass a law authorizing the move.

This story was originally published April 21, 2016 at 2:48 PM with the headline "Report: NC has more Confederate monuments than 48 other states."