NCDOT moves to eliminate references to Jefferson Davis Highway in North Carolina
More than a century ago, when Southern cities and towns were still erecting Civil War monuments, the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to have a highway named for Confederate president Jefferson Davis that ran from Northern Virginia across the South to California.
The route they chose through North Carolina runs about 160 miles from the Virginia state line, following U.S. 15 through Durham and Chapel Hill south to Sanford, then U.S. 1 to South Carolina near Rockingham.
Now the state Department of Transportation is moving to erase some of the last vestiges of the highway, by removing signs and markers in the state-owned right of way. The groundwork for the effort was laid this summer after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis led to a reappraisal of Confederate monuments and symbols.
The Daughters of the Confederacy conceived of the Jefferson Davis Highway in 1913, partly as an answer to the Lincoln Highway that was dedicated that year between New York and San Francisco. The group identified the highway’s route along existing roads, then promoted the name with signs, stone markers and state and local government resolutions.
Some states, such as Virginia, officially adopted the name. But NCDOT officials say despite requests from the Daughters of the Confederacy in the 1920s and again in the late 1950s, North Carolina never did.
“Our board of transportation, your predecessors, on at least two occasions declined to do that,” chairman Mike Fox told fellow board members in June. “So there is not an officially named Jefferson Davis Highway from the Board of Transportation out there anywhere, but there are some local designations that appear to have been put up within our right of way.”
This week, the board’s road naming committee, which Fox leads, signed off on NCDOT’s plans to remove several Jefferson Davis Highway signs in Granville County. Kevin Lacy, the department’s traffic engineer, said the signs are official highway signs, but it’s not clear how they got there.
“There’s no reason for those to be there,” Lacy told the committee.
Lacy said he will also write a letter to the state division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy asking it to work with local communities to remove several stone markers along the highway.
In the late 1920s, the Daughters of the Confederacy placed stone highway markers about every 10 miles, which means there would have been 16 to 18 markers in North Carolina, including one at each state line, Lacy wrote in an email Thursday. NCDOT was able to locate 10 markers, including two, in Aberdeen and Chapel Hill, that have already been removed, Lacy said.
Fox said Lacy doesn’t need the full Board of Transportation’s direction to have the signs and markers removed, calling it a “normal department function.”
“He’s just addressing the signs and the little monuments, which from our perspective have never been approved and are illegal encroachments,” Fox said.
Efforts by The News & Observer to reach the United Daughters of the Confederacy were not successful. The organization lists an email address on its website but not a phone number.
While it wants the signs and markers gone, NCDOT is not seeking to rename a section of U.S. 1 in Lee County, from Tramway south to the Moore County line, that is actually called Jefferson Davis Highway. The Daughters of the Confederacy asked the county to so designate the road in 1959, and Lee commissioners agreed, according to a copy of the resolution provided by the county.
Lacy suggested that because the county named the road NCDOT should let the county handle any changes, which would affect the addresses of numerous residents and business owners.
“My recommendation is keep us out of it for that small segment of the roadway until the locals are ready to address it,” he told the committee.
But Lee County officials say if the highway is to be rechristened it should be up to NCDOT or the General Assembly. No one has asked Lee County commissioners to rename the road, said spokeswoman Jamie Brown, and the county isn’t considering it.
“Our board feels that this is a state-maintained road, they have the authority, based on statute, to name this road, and that this is not a county issue,” she said.
Chapel Hill highway marker removed last year
Removing Jefferson Davis Highway markers has not always been straightforward. In October 2018, the Orange County Board of Commissioners responded to a citizen petition and voted to repeal a resolution from 1959 that designated U.S. 15 through Orange County as the Jefferson Davis National Highway. But commissioners said they didn’t have the authority to take down a stone marker for the highway on East Franklin Street in downtown Chapel Hill.
UNC students and others who pressed the university to remove the Silent Sam statue on campus also wanted the highway marker gone. So did the Town of Chapel Hill, though mayor Pam Hemminger said it wasn’t clear who owned the land or the marker, which was in NCDOT right of way.
“Conversations between the town, Orange County and NCDOT have failed to identify a clear path forward,” Hemminger said in January 2019.
But a month later, the town determined that the marker was in fact on town property and removed it along with a plaque put up by protesters. The combination, town officials said, had become “a public nuisance and created a public safety threat.”
Effort includes amending Wikipedia page
In researching the state’s involvement with the Jefferson Davis Highway, Lacy said NCDOT learned of an error in the highway’s Wikipedia page that originated with the department.
The page says the designation of the Jefferson Davis Highway was approved in North Carolina on May 28, 1955, citing a list of memorial highways published by NCDOT. But Lacy says his staff combed through records for the Highway Commission and found only references to denying the request. NCDOT’s list was incorrect, he said, and led Wikipedia astray.
“We have corrected it in the database, but we have not corrected it in the Wikipedia article,” he said.
Lacy said NCDOT will contact Wikipedia and provide documentation to set the record straight.
This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
