Stop stalling an African American monument at the NC Capitol, Republicans | Opinion
If the budget is a statement of a legislature’s priorities, it’s troubling that North Carolina’ may once again exclude funding for a monument to African Americans.
State Senate leader Phil Berger supports building the monument on the grounds of the State Capitol, but he told reporters last week that the funding for the project may be left out when Republican lawmakers agree on a state budget that is now six weeks overdue.
House Speaker Tim Moore hinted at why. He noted that the North Carolina Freedom Park, a private and state-funded project that commemorates the struggles and achievements of African Americans, is about to open across from the Legislative Building. The implication is that GOP House lawmakers may think one public acknowledgment of African American history is enough.
It’s not.
Freedom Park is a fine addition, but it was conceived before Republicans took control of the General Assembly and paid for by private and state funds. The proposed African American monument would stand amid other monuments on the State Capitol grounds, the symbolic center of North Carolina’s history.
The monument was approved by the the Historical Commission and the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission in 2016. Gov. Roy Cooper’s proposed budget and the state Senate’s proposed budget include $3 million to design and build the monument. It’s theme and image is yet to be determined.
The legislature already approved funding for the monument once. It included $2.5 million for it in the 2019 state budget. But Cooper vetoed that spending plan because he said it included excessive tax cuts and insufficient raises for teachers. Funding for the project was left out of the two-year budget passed in 2021.
Now, with a budget surplus and billions of dollars in reserve, the monument’s relatively modest cost cannot justify further delay. Republicans now have an opportunity to commemorate the struggles and achievements of African Americans at a time when their party too often panders to white grievance.
The grounds of the State Capitol, an 1830’s Greek Revival-style building constructed with the labor of slaves, is a particularly powerful setting for an African American monument. Three monuments to the Confederacy stood near the Capitol for many years. Those monuments were removed in June of 2020 by order of Cooper, who said their presence threatened public safety and represented white supremacy.
The governor acted after people protesting the police murder of George Floyd pulled down and dragged away sculptures of Confederate soldiers at the base of the 75-foot tall monument to the Confederate dead. The monument was dedicated in 1895 during a period when Southern states passed voting laws designed to disenfranchise Black voters.
In the next state budget, the General Assembly can respond to the negative history of the Capitol’s Confederate monuments by making a positive statement to the future about racial respect in 2023. Certainly, the Republican Party here and nationally would benefit by encouraging racial harmony at a time when some Republican leaders are exploiting racial divisions even as they downplay the role of racism in the nation’s history and its present day.
A new monument to African Americans on grounds where monuments once honored the Confederate cause would do more than acknowledge the history of African Americans. It would also draw the GOP closer to its own history as the Party of Lincoln.
In 2021, the Senate’s lead budget writer, Republican Sen. Brent Jackson of Autryville, told the News & Observer that the Republican-led Senate had backed off its previous support for the African American monument after the vandalizing and abrupt removal of the Confederate monuments. “We just felt like this was not the time to put something back up there of any type,”he said.
Now is the time. No more delays. No substitutes elsewhere. Put the monument to African Americans at the heart of North Carolina’s history.
