RFP Staff
♦ Salisbury’s City Council meets Tuesday July 21st at 4 p.m. at 217 S. Main Street in Downtown Salisbury. Tuesday’s City Council meeting will feature a “public comment” period where discussions of the city’s iconic Confederate Monument on West Innes and major issues facing the city hall may draw emotional heat. Already on social media and through email campaigns, people are urging partisans in support of moving the monument or keeping it where it is to show up Tuesday.
At present the Confederate Monument controversy appears to involve three major viewpoints:
• Area African-American folks with beliefs and strong emotions about the symbols of the Confederacy connected with slavery, life in the Jim Crow era South, and the Klu Klux Klan allegedly present in Rowan County up until the early 90’s. (Some say a remnant still exists in Rowan)
• Supporters of Southern heritage and culture, such as the Sons of the Confederate Veterans and their counterparts the Sons of Union Veterans who desire to protect a monument dedicated as a memorial to soldiers and sailors fallen in battle. Many view the moving of the monument akin to hauling away the “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” from Arlington National Cemetery.
• A third view preferring to protect the monument for its artistic merit and its position as the icon of the City of Salisbury. Some individuals from this viewpoint have suggested funding monuments commemorating “Nat Turner’s Slave Revolt”, “Malcolm X”, or constructing commemorative recreation centers and playgrounds in underserved communities.
Tuesday’s discussions may all prove moot after this week when the N.C. Legislature takes up Senate Bill 22 that proposes protecting such monuments.
