Activists tore down Confederate statue in Durham. Now some want pedestal gone too.

A Durham committee asked city and county leaders Monday to remove the base of a century-old Confederate statue that protesters toppled in 2017.

The City-County Committee on Confederate Monuments and Memorials said in a letter that officials should quickly remove the base and store it. The statue of an armed Confederate soldier had stood upon it outside the old county courthouse at 200 E. Main St. since 1924.

“The Confederate base continues to send a message to our city that white supremacy is something the city and county honor,” the letter to the City Council and Board of County Commissioners states. “Since the murder of George Floyd, Confederate monuments and memorials underscore oppression, not equity or justice.”

Protesters knocked the statue off its base after the deadly August 2017 white supremacist rally and counter-protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. Durham police put it in storage, The News & Observer previously reported.

The committee asked the city and county in January 2019 to put public art at the site and display the base elsewhere.

Durham Mayor Steve Schewel told The N&O on Tuesday he supports removing the monument base, which is owned by the Durham County Board of Commissioners.

The committee said the statue is the only Confederate memorial left standing in the country that was purchased with public money.

“Well-known white supremacist and Klan member Julian S. Carr convinced the legislature to levy a one-time tax on the citizenry, Black and White, to purchase and erect the memorial,” the letter said.

Confederate statues coming down

There were almost 800 Confederate monuments in the country last year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. North Carolina had 95 of them, the third most in the country behind Georgia and Virginia.

Six monuments in North Carolina were taken down between 2013 and 2019, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Rocky Mount City Council voted last week to take down a century-old Confederate monument and move it to a “safe” place.

Officials removed Confederate statues in Pittsboro and Winston-Salem last year. Protesters pulled down the Silent Sam statue in 2018 at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.

A monument erected at a Durham cemetery in 2014 by the Sons of Confederate Veterans was defaced with cement last year. Dozens of Confederate monuments across the South have been vandalized since the deadly protests in Charlottesville in 2017.

An Elon University poll last year found 65% of North Carolina residents think Confederate monuments should remain in place, while 35% want them removed.

“The racism the statue embodies has a measurable and devastating effect on Black people, causing levels of stress that cut short life spans and damage mental and physical health,” the monuments committee said in its letter.

This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 1:56 PM.