Lawsuit Filed To Remove North Carolina Courthouse’s Confederate Monument For ‘Faithful Slaves’

Source: George Rose / Getty

Here’s a question: If America is not and has never been a racist country, why are there still so many monuments in the nation that celebrate American racism, and why does one political party in particular keep working so hard to preserve them?

Here’s a second question: Is there anything more insidious than the government of this totally not racist country trying to convince people that the enslaved were happy being enslaved?

According to the Associated Press, a federal lawsuit was filed on Tuesday calling for the removal of a Confederate monument that sits right outside of a North Carolina county courthouse and was erected “in appreciation of our faithful slaves.”

Faithful. Slaves.

Remember when the Florida Board of “Education” greenlighted a curriculum that taught slaves benefitted from slavery due to the skills they learned, and then members of the board pushed for a curriculum that offered “opposing viewpoints” or “other perspectives” of slavery that didn’t “lead to a viewpoint of an ‘oppressor vs. oppressed’ based solely on race or ethnicity?” Well, this is the same benevolent slave-loving energy.

Of course, Florida officials made those decisions in 2023 while the monument commemorating “faithful slaves” was erected in 1902, but the fact that a lawsuit needed to be filed in order to have the offensive, white supremacist eyesore removed is an indication that America, at its core, hasn’t progressed as much in the last 122 years as white conservatives would have us believe.

From AP:

The Concerned Citizens of Tyrrell County, a civic group focused on issues facing local Black residents, and several of its members filed the lawsuit against the county’s commissioners. The legal complaint argues that the monument constitutes racially discriminatory government speech in violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Tyrrell County includes a few thousand residents in eastern North Carolina. The monument, which was erected on the courthouse grounds in 1902, features a Confederate soldier standing atop a pedestal, with one of the markings below mentioning “faithful slaves.” The lawsuit argues that the monument conveys a racist and offensive message that Black people who were enslaved in the county preferred slavery to freedom.

“The point of putting such a monument near the door of the Tyrrell County Courthouse was to remind Black people that the county’s institutions saw their rightful place as one of subservience and obedience, and to suggest to them that they could not and would not get justice in the courts,” the lawsuit reads.

Seriously, it’s right in front of a courthouse—a building that is supposed to represent America’s “justice” system, which is supposed to feel as accessible to Black people as it is to white people if this is truly a land where all are equal. 

The Concerned Citizens wrote in its suit that the organization has been fighting to get the monument removed for years, which would mean that, for years, others were fighting to preserve an ode to Black people who lived and died as the property and human chattel of white people and supposedly did so happily.

In truth, there was never any benefit to being a slave, but the narrative certainly benefits the legacy of white America—and maybe that’s the point.

SEE ALSO:

Marjorie Taylor Greene Pledges To ‘Defend Our Nation’s History’ While Confusing Confederate And Union Monuments

Richmond Finally Removes Robert E. Lee Confederate Monument

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