The Town of Edenton has removed a Confederate monument from its downtown waterfront, but plans to relocate it to a park adjacent to the Chowan County courthouse.
Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons lifted an injunction preventing the monument’s relocation on Aug. 25. That injunction was first placed in 2023 after pro-Confederate groups sued over the town’s previous attempts to move the monument.
The judicial order and subsequent removal of the monument from its downtown location, where it has been since 1961, is a victory for Edenton’s legal efforts.
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Since 2020, the town has struggled to reach a compromise over the future of the 27-foot-tall monument which features a statue of a soldier and an inscription honoring “our Confederate dead.” Lawsuits from disparate groups which both support and oppose the monument have further hamstrung the Town Council from moving forward with its intended goal of relocation.
Carolina Public Press first reported on the community-wide debate earlier this year.
A state statute offers broad protection for Confederate monuments, stating that “objects of remembrance” can only be permanently relocated to a site of similar prominence. That 2015 law makes it difficult for local governments to move, much less dismantle, their controversial monuments.
Edenton’s relocation plans have remained mostly the same since the Town Council, Chowan County and the aforementioned pro-Confederate groups approved a deal last year, which involved transferring ownership of the monument to the county and moving it to Veterans Memorial Park near the courthouse.
The pro-Confederate groups in turn agreed to settle their lawsuit against Edenton, although they would later back out of that arrangement. The recent judicial order that lifted the injunction also denied the plaintiffs’ motions to continue the lawsuit, putting that legal battle to rest unless the pro-Confederate groups successfully appeal the decision.
Edenton faced more litigation after its agreement with Chowan County came to light. The left-leaning Southern Coalition for Social Justice brought a lawsuit in January which alleged that the Town Council’s closed-session negotiations violated state public meetings law.
The lawsuit further objected to the plan to move the monument, arguing that a symbol of white supremacy on courthouse grounds would violate individuals’ civil rights under the state constitution.
Jake Sussman, an attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said that SCSJ’s lawsuit, which is not connected to the recent judicial order, still has a path forward.
“Unlike the pro-Confederate groups’ lawsuit, which we agree had no merit and was appropriately dismissed, our lawsuit isn’t about ‘standing,’ which our clients have, or whether the town can relocate the monument, which it can,” Sussman told CPP.
“Instead, our case is about how the decision to move the monument to the courthouse was reached, and whether placing a Confederate monument outside of an active courthouse in 2025 is incompatible with the promise of ‘equal justice under the law.’
“Once our case is heard, we believe it will become clear that the agreement to move the monument to the courthouse property is contrary to law and needs to be unwound.”
Sussman said he asked Edenton and Chowan County officials to wait on installing the monument at its new location until the pending lawsuit is resolved.
Work crews removed the monument and put it into storage last week, according to a public statement by Edenton Mayor W. Hackney High Jr., where it will remain until it is ready to be erected.
High addressed criticisms of the town’s handling of the situation from both sides of the debate.
To the residents who advocated for the monument’s removal or relocation, High wrote that their efforts “brought about meaningful change.” As for those who opposed moving the monument, High assured them that it would be preserved and relocated respectfully.
“As we reflect on the Confederate Monument debate here in Edenton, I am reminded of an old saying: ‘A good settlement leaves all parties somewhat dissatisfied,’” the statement read.
“This speaks to the very nature of compromise — no one gets everything they want, but everyone gets something they can live with.”
The mayor was correct in his assertion that not everyone will be satisfied.
Al Rieder, a spokesperson for the North Carolina branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told CPP in an email statement that the monument’s planned relocation near the courthouse “does not go far enough.”
“Precedent has been set in other North Carolina municipalities to at minimum relocate such monuments to nearby cemeteries, and ideally to either place them in a local museum or remove them entirely,” Reider said.
CAIR-NC, which has consistently voiced its opposition to the estimated 170 Confederate monuments and symbols still standing across North Carolina, suggested that the Edenton monument should be donated and placed near the state-run Historic Edenton Visitor’s Center.
“There, the Confederate monument’s origins as a product of late 19th/early 20th-century Lost Cause propaganda can be properly contextualized and interpreted for the public,” Rieder said.
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