RALEIGH — North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has ordered Confederate monuments on the State Capitol grounds to be moved, according to a statement.
Protesters in Raleigh have already pulled down parts of a Confederate monument.
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Demonstrators used a strap to pull down two statues that are part of a larger monument near the state capitol in downtown Raleigh.
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Police officers earlier in the evening had foiled the protesters’ previous attempt to use ropes to topple the statues. Earlier in the day, hundreds of demonstrators had marched through downtown Raleigh and Durham to protest against police brutality and to celebrate Juneteenth, which commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
Gov. Cooper shared the following statement on the Confederate monuments:
“I have ordered the Confederate monuments on the Capitol grounds be moved to protect public safety. I am concerned about the dangerous efforts to pull down and carry off large, heavy statues and the strong potential for violent clashes at the site. If the legislature had repealed their 2015 law that puts up legal roadblocks to removal we could have avoided the dangerous incidents of last night.
“Monuments to white supremacy don’t belong in places of allegiance, and it’s past time that these painful memorials be moved in a legal, safe way.”
The monuments being removed include the remainder of the North Carolina Confederate monument, the monument to the Women of the Confederacy, and the figure of Henry Lawson Wyatt.
Numerous Confederate statues have been vandalized or torn down across the South following the death of George Floyd.
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