Chatham commissioners want courthouse Confederate statue moved

After months of often heated debate, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners decided Monday that a Confederate monument that has stood outside the county courthouse for more than a century must go.

Commissioners had been negotiating with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which donated the statue to the county in 1907, in recent months to re-purpose it as a monument to all veterans. But the UDC backed out of the talks two weeks ago, so commissioners voted 4-1 to give the group an Oct. 1 deadline to come up with plan for the statue's future.

If nothing is done by Nov. 1, the commissioners said, they will consider the statue as trespassing on public property and make their own plans to remove it.

The vote was met by angry shouts from a handful of people in the crowd – one man called commissioners "traitors" – and a few people had to be forcibly removed from the meeting room.

Others applauded the resolution.

"The Confederate statue is a symbol of hate. Whether that started out that way, it is now, and it should be removed, and something should be put there that would unify our community," resident Roxanne Shager said.

"You cannot take it down just because you don’t like something," countered Woody Weaver. "You cannot take that monument down."

More than 20 people spoke to commissioners before the vote, fairly evenly divided between statue supporters and opponents.

"Any time a community has a symbol in a very public place that’s offensive, it should not be there," Betty Wilson said. "Our government is for all the people, justice for all the people. We do not need that symbol in front of our courthouse."

"Our statue should be left in full view for future generations to observe, ask questions, learn and remember," Dora Sue Christian said. "Memorial statues should not be hidden from view, but left front and center as a constant reminder of our past."

"I don’t think they had any intent to erect a statue that would remind blacks or anyone else of how racist we were in the past, if we were in fact that racist," John Shirley said.

"Obey the state law and leave the statue in Pittsboro alone. It is there to honor our ancestors, and that is it’s only purpose," James Ward said.

UDC chapter President Barbara Pugh insisted that the statue is now county property and cannot be moved under a 2015 state law governing public monuments.

"There’s a mountain of evidence that the [Civil] War was not about slavery," Pugh said.