Reprinted with permission. Roy Cooper is Governor of North Carolina. Read the original here.
Last weekend, I watched with horror as events in Charlottesville unfolded. Having served as North Carolina Attorney General for 16 years, I am all too familiar with the racism, bigotry and full-out white supremacy that exist in corners of our society. But it was shocking to watch these elements displayed so publicly — venom and hatred shamelessly spewed in epithets. My stomach sank to learn that a peaceful counter-protester had been killed and many others injured as the hatred morphed into violence.
It started with a monument, stone and metal, inanimate and yet more provocative now than ever. Charlottesville could have been Raleigh, or Asheboro, or any other city in North Carolina that is home to a Confederate monument. I don’t pretend to know what it’s like for a person of color to pass by one of these monuments and consider that those memorialized in stone and metal did not value my freedom or humanity. Unlike an African-American father, I’ll never have to explain to my daughters why there exists an exalted monument for those who wished to keep her and her ancestors in chains.
Some people cling to the belief that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights. But history is not on their side. We cannot continue to glorify a war against the United States of America fought in the defense of slavery. These monuments should come down.
Our Civil War history is important, but it belongs in textbooks and museums — not a place of allegiance on our Capitol grounds. And our history must tell the full story, including the subjugation of humans created in God’s image to provide the back-breaking labor that drove the South’s agrarian economy.
I understand the frustration of those fed up with the pace of change. But after protesters toppled a statue in Durham Monday night, I said there was a better way to remove these monuments.
My first responsibility as governor is to protect North Carolinians and keep them safe. The likelihood of protesters being injured or worse as they may try to topple any one of the hundreds of monuments in our state concerns me. And the potential for those same white supremacist elements we saw in Charlottesville to swarm the site, weapons in hand, in retaliation is a threat to public safety.
It’s time to move forward. And here’s how I plan to do that.
First, the North Carolina legislature must repeal a 2015 law that prevents removal or relocation of monuments. Cities, counties and the state must have the authority and opportunity to make these decisions.
Second, I’ve asked the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to determine the cost and logistics of removing Confederate monuments from state property as well as alternatives for their placement at museums or historical sites where they can be studied in context.
Third, the North Carolina legislature should defeat a bill that grants immunity from liability to motorists who strike protesters. That bill passed the state House and remains alive in the Senate. The Senate should kill it. Full stop. Those who attack protesters, weaponizing their vehicles like terrorists, should find no safe haven in our state.
Conversations about race and our past are never simple or easy. They are deeply personal and emotional. As President Lincoln said, we must do this work “with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds.” President Lincoln was on point: we must do what we know is right, and we must do it the right way.
I may be the lone dissenter but the war itself was fought for reasons other than slavery… We can white-wash the substance of the situation by reducing it to slavery but that’s not intellectually honest. The statues exist because we have always viewed these men as patriots – not just of the South but of the country as a whole. Most were classmates or veterans of the same wars fought by Union officers that still stand.
I will openly agree that the present politics of these symbols renders their importance indecent. But they were created and funded mostly by the women of the South to venerate their fathers and brothers for military service rendered to their country (not slavery). It may seem that the cause might be branded upon their heads but that was not the case – it was war. And the wounded veterans, the dead soldiers’ widows, and the mothers of sons who served erected these monuments in military tradition – not as masters.
Monuments exist to remind us of our better selves. Imagine the moral conscience of those who grew up under slavery and learned that their state was open to attack. There was no choice about what to do. Military service was separate from the economic institution of slavery. It did not create it.
Thank you Governor Cooper for a thoughtful and intelligent response the to the issue.
I’ve always been confused by these statues of Confederate “heros”. They declared war on the USA in order to keep other human beings enslaved. To me, there’s nothing heroic about that. Thank you, Governor Cooper.
First-class, compassionate, understandable, policy and course of action. Peace.
I am a native born Southerner who was raised on the “Lost Cause” mythology of the Civil War and how the South stood up against the North. That was all a load of horse manure. The Confederacy was established to keep our brothers and sisters in bondage and the leaders of the Confederacy were traitors. There is no place in modern America for continuing to honor those who fought for the Confederacy. Thank you Governor Cooper for saying so eloquently that which needs to be said.
I am so glad you are our governor.
Governor, thank you!