Committee on Confederate monuments begins work

The N.C. Historical Commission’s committee on confederate monuments held its first meeting Monday afternoon by teleconference, setting goals and discussing how to tackle the controversial issue.

Back in September, the full commission put off a decision on removing three Confederate monuments from the State Capitol grounds. Instead, it formed a five-person committee to study the politically fraught issue, which the North Carolina General Assembly dropped into their laps with a 2015 law that makes it more difficult to remove such statues.

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During Monday’s initial meeting, the committee laid out its goals. Among them:

1) Seeking legal input from the law schools at Duke University, Elon University, N.C. Central, UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Forest University, Campbell University and from the UNC School of government.

2) Seeking outside input from historical experts, including David Cecelski, a North Carolina historian whose award-winning work on race in North Carolina has often touched on the Civil War and reconstruction era. The committee is also seeking input from historians at the state’s historically black colleges and universities and the Civil War and Reconstruction history museum now being planned in Fayetteville.

3) Creating a web portal for public comment, which they will also accept via traditional mail and holding at least one public forum before they present their work to the full commission.

Read more: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2018/01/23/committee-confederate-monuments-begins-work/