Deadline passes for new plan for Confederate statue outside Chatham courthouse

A Tuesday deadline set by the Chatham County Board of Commissioners passed without any plan for the future of a Confederate monument that has stood outside the county courthouse for more than a century.

Posted 10:56 p.m. Oct 1, 2019 — Updated 10:56 p.m. Oct 1, 2019

PITTSBORO, N.C. — A Tuesday deadline set by the Chatham County Board of Commissioners passed without any plan for the future of a Confederate monument that has stood outside the county courthouse for more than a century.

The commissioners voted in August that the statue must go, and they gave the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which donated the statue to the county in 1907, until Tuesday to submit a proposal for what to do with it.

Barbara Pugh, president of the UDC's Winnie Davis Chapter, has maintained that the statue is now county property and cannot be moved under a 2015 state law governing public monuments.

"We are not aware of any change in ownership over the years," board Chairman Mike Dasher wrote to Pugh last week. "If you are aware of any documents by which the county accepted ownership of the monument, please provide it to us. If the UDC is agreeing to ownership and is requesting additional time to present a plan for removing the monument, the county may consider such a request."

County officials didn't report receiving any such request by Tuesday evening.

Without a plan, Dasher said in a statement that the monument would be "declared a public trespass" on Nov. 1, clearing the way for the commissioners to devise their own removal plan.

"[If] the county is forced to remove the monument, it will be handled with care and respect and will be safeguarded until such time as the UDC determines the final disposition of its monument," he said.

The monument's removal has sparked an intense debate in Chatham County. Some monument supporters have raised a couple of Confederate flags near Pittsboro in recent weeks.

One flagpole was cut down last Thursday night, but supporters had it back up by Friday evening. A weekend protest about the flags resulted in three arrests.

Suggest A Correction