NC Confederate monuments in ‘secure facility,’ while workers try to remove what’s left

Tuesday morning, workers trying to remove the massive granite Confederate monument on Capitol grounds delayed their work as they sought additional equipment.

Crews worked overnight to take down what remained of the monument that faced west down Hillsborough Street for 125 years. Sunday, following Gov. Roy Cooper’s order, workers used a crane to take down the statue and two other pieces of the monument.

Late Monday, crews returned to the site on Salisbury Street to resume the job they had started Sunday with a crane arriving just before 2 a.m. By 5:45 a.m., though, there was a pause in the action.

While the monument’s base and the tall, narrow, granite obelisk remained Monday, there was still cause for some to celebrate, and that included cake and line dances.

“(Cooper) actually listened to the voice of the people,” said Jemima Liteli, a student at N.C. State who organized the celebration. “Today is a celebration of the victories that we have acquired over that short amount of time.”

About 16 people gathered in the streets a few yards away from the monument to celebrate the official dismantling of the statue, as well as the removal of the monument to the Women of the Confederacy and the Henry Wyatt Monument. Those two were removed Saturday, also at Cooper’s direction. Cooper’s order came less than 24 hours after protesters pulled down two bronze soldiers Friday that had flanked the Confederate monument.

The monuments will be “be maintained and stored in a secure facility until it can be determined where they should be kept permanently,” Cooper press secretary Dory MacMillan said Monday night.

The Historical Commission will need to approve relocating the monument permanently or “alteration of the monuments under North Carolina law, which the legislature classified as an ‘object of remembrance,’” McMillan said.

MacMillan told The News & Observer via email Monday that the governor was not involved with directing law enforcement on Friday night.

“The agencies that responded made decisions on the ground to protect the safety of their officers and the public,” MacMillan said.

Saturday, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety said some officers were injured Friday night during an initial attempt to pull down parts of the memorial. State Capitol Police Chief Chip Hawley was in contact with Erik Hooks, Secretary of the Department of Public Safety, DPS spokesperson Pamela Walker told The News & Observer Saturday. The situation escalated after dark as more people crowded the monument, Walker said.

“The chief determined it was best to not re-engage on the statue, and as a result no one was seriously injured,” Walker wrote.

After protesters pulled down the statues, MacMillan said Cooper consulted with Hooks late Friday night. He advised Cooper that the Confederate monuments had become a threat to public safety. The Department of Administration also concurred that the statues posed a threat to public safety, she said.

Cooper announced his order Saturday afternoon.

Monday at the Capitol

Liteli participated in several protests the last few weeks following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. But she felt discouraged every time she approached the Capitol and saw the monuments still standing.

She started a petition to explain why the statues had to come down. She had plans of taking the petition to Cooper. It had had accumulated over 20,000 signatures in two weeks.

“The people wanted to take this down,” Liteli said. “I’m not going to offer an explanation for their pain. Honestly, I felt that people had enough, and they took it down.”

With the removal taken care of over the weekend, Liteli thought it was time for a small gesture to honor the victory.

“We still have a long way to go, but we have to celebrate the little steps that we take every now and then,” Liteli said. “We are still human and we are still deserving of happiness.”

Chalice Overy of Durham watched the statues come down over the weekend from afar, but wanted to come out and celebrate with Liteli and her group. She was grateful to see it happen after weeks of protest. Overy said the statues coming down represented “victory.”

“It shows what’s possible,” Overy said. “I’m just glad to see them down. It was a long time coming.”

Between dancing and pieces of cake, Rev. Melissa Florer-Bixler told the crowd there was more work to be done. Florer-Bixler and Overy, both pastors, had given a presentation to protesters June 12 about the history of the monuments, The News & Observer reported.

For a short while on Monday morning, it appeared like workers might continue to try to disassemble the monument. Those attempts had ended on Sunday after a crane failed to separate the obelisk from the base.

A little after 8 a.m. Monday, a worker drove away the crane, and it did not return. Not long after, another worker removed the machine that was used to lift crewmembers into the air so that they could secure parts of the monument to the crane.

By 9 a.m., the machinery that had surrounded the monument was gone, and so were the workers who’d been at the site to take it apart.

By the afternoon, the yellow police tape that separated onlookers from the statue was removed.

Protesters react

Taari Coleman, an activist with N.C. Born, a group that has led daily protests this month, spoke about her emotions about seeing the statues removed.

“I was excited to see them come down,” Coleman said. “I was not excited to see white people lynch something on Juneteenth.”

She said leaders should have made decisions to take them down “a lot sooner than now.” Local and state leaders still have more to do than “the bare minimum when it comes to them removing signs of racism from the city.”

Representatives from two different groups known as TRO (Truth Revealed Organization) and UNITY said removing the statues was always one of their goals. But in a statement posted to Twitter Monday night, they said they had hoped it would be done through legislation, protesting and raising awareness. They said they were “blindsided” Friday night when people attempted to take the statues down with ropes and distanced themselves from those who took matters into their own hands and “fringe groups.”

They had organized a peaceful event with lawyers, professors and students from Campbell Law School, they said in their statement. They had written letters to local and state leaders about their concerns and hope for change, including removing the statues. TRO and UNITY said they led a group through downtown and ended back at the Capitol.

When others “tied lassos around the necks of Confederate statues on the memorial,” they took cover to protect themselves.

Still, the groups said, the events “allowed for Gov. Roy Cooper to find a loophole” and declare the Confederate statues to be an issue of public safety.

“It is a great victory that Gov. Cooper is now able to bring down the monument without the permission of the North Carolina Historic Commission. We remember slavery existed each and every day, yet we do not need to be threatened with it in a glorified manner as well.”

This story was originally published June 22, 2020 at 7:38 PM.