State Historical Commission Votes to Keep Confederate Statues at State Capitol

RALEIGH – At a N.C. Historical Commission meeting on Wednesday, in the aftermath of a mob take down of the Silent Sam confederate statue on the campus if UNC CHapel Hill, members determined they did not have the authority to remove the confederate statues from the grounds of the Old State Capitol building.

“All of this comes after the State Department of Administration petitioned to relocate the three Confederate monuments from the state Capitol grounds to Bentonville Battlefield in Johnston County.

A committee of State Historical Commission was tasked with figuring out a recommendation about whether to move them or not.

They received more than 7,000 responses from the public. One member says 80 percent of those responses says they did not want the monuments moved from the Capitol grounds.”

The commission had set up an online portal for public input and, judging by that member’s comment, the response was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the monuments in place.

However, this decision was not on the merit of keeping or removing the statues, but instead on the commission’s authority to remove the statues based on the requirements set out in law.

They did vote, though, one a few other measures that provide more context.

“The North Carolina Historical Commission voted 9-2 Wednesday against removing three Confederate monuments from the State Capitol Grounds.

By the same margin, the commission also voted to recommend erecting new signage that will add context to the monuments, including noting that slavery was a cause of the Civil War. The commission also is urging the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to plan and raise money for a monument recognizing the contributions of African Americans to the state’s history.

In a third vote, the commission unanimously agreed that monuments at the capitol’s Union Square are “an overrepresentation and over-memorialization” of the Confederacy and Civil War in state history.”

The decision will undoubtedly prolong the always reliable protests of Leftist mobs, like those in Chapel Hill, that much prefer to take these matters into their own hands.