Confederate statues removed from NC city after officers were fired for racist remarks
A North Carolina city said Thursday it removed two Confederate monuments, hours after announcing three police officers were fired for making racist remarks.
Crews in Wilmington relocated the Confederate Memorial and the George Davis Statue, which had stood downtown, the city said in a Twitter post at about 5:30 a.m. Officials did not say where the monuments were taken.
“While members of the community have expressed a desire to see these monuments moved for many years, recent protests and controversy over these monuments has grown to a point that the monuments, in their original locations, were a threat to public safety,” the city tweeted.
Last week, Wilmington officials enacted a five-night curfew near the monuments as protests continued following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.
Though state law requires approval from the N.C. Historical Commission for some Confederate monuments to be removed, it “allows an exception for temporary removal in the interest of public safety,” the city said.
Wilmington, a city near the coast with a deep history of racial unrest, said Wednesday that three police officers were fired Tuesday after racist comments surfaced.
The officers, Cpl. Jessie Moore and Kevin Piner and Brian Gilmore, were accused of using “hate-filled” language during recorded conversations. At one point in the recording, Piner said the police department’s only concern was “kneeling down with the black folks.”
“When I first learned of these conversations, I was shocked, saddened and disgusted,” Police Chief Donny Williams said, according to the Associated Press. “There is no place for this behavior in our agency or our city and it will not be tolerated.”
The city’s complicated past includes the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, also known as the Wilmington massacre, in which white supremacists rioted. At the time, a mob took over the local government and destroyed the office of a Black-owned newspaper. As many as 60 Black people died.
When Wilmington announced Thursday it had temporarily taken down Confederate monuments, the move was met with mixed reactions.
“Hallelujah -whatever the initial reason for removal let’s make this permanent because it’s the right thing to do.”
In a Facebook post about the removal, one person wrote: “A knee jerk reaction to anarchists. If you wanted a plan (I.e.: moving them to a museum or battlefield park) it could have been done as a compromise.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2020 at 8:47 AM.
