Workers with Guy M. Turner Inc. removed a Confederate monument from the northwest corner of the Old Forsyth Courthouse in downtown Winston-Salem just after 11 a.m. today.

Police Chief Catrina Thompson, City Attorney Angela Carmon and Assistant City Manager Damon Dequenne monitored the event.

The group Hate Out of Winston is holding a “celebration and rededication” across the street from the site at 4 p.m.

“This will also be a time to reassert what we have been saying since day one,” the Facebook invitation says. “This is, and always has been, about more than just the statue. This is about inequity in our schools, neighborhoods, and communities. The systems of White Supremacy need to be torn down.”

The United Daughters of the Confederacy raised $3,000 to erect the statue. Alfred Moore Waddell, who led the bloody 1898 coup against a multiracial local government in Wilmington, gave the keynote speech for the Confederate monument in Winston-Salem. During the overthrow of multiracial democracy in Wilmington, Waddell said, “If you find the Negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls, and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks.”

Councilman Dan Besse, a Democrat who represents the Southwest Ward, highlighted Waddell’s role in erecting the statue in a Facebook post.

“The removal of this divisive symbol is intended to protect our community and aid in the healing of longstanding wounds,” Besse wrote. “However, it is necessary that we remember this is only a symbol. We must continue the work of dismantling the far more damaging legacies of Jim Crow and segregation in housing , health, education, and resources by building equity and opportunity for all in our communities. That is our real work, and we must never forget this.”

More reporting here, here and here.

  • Workers remove the Confederate monument from downtown Winston-Salem earlier this month. (file photo)

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