To the editor:
In memory and honor of the men who answered our state’s call, and in response to the Chatham News + Record article “Three arrested in Saturday protests around Confederate monument” (Oct. 10-16 edition):
Chatham County commissioners voted 4-1 that the statue had to go. They delivered an ultimatum to the Winnie Davis chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy to move it themselves or the county will move it on Nov. 1st, declaring it a “public trespass.”
Of the five commissioners, three were born in the north; one of these three is African-American. The question to all: if the monument at the courthouse were one honoring Martin Luther King Jr., would you have declared it a public trespass? You may say that such a statue isn’t controversial, really! The people who don’t honor King are not racist as there are many blacks in this group, but they don’t protest and demand its removal where ever located.
I don’t expect Yankees to know southern history, but I expect the two board members who are to know our history. Ignorance of factual American history is the cause of condemning what many are very proud of. The monument in Pittsboro is in honor and memory of the men of Chatham County who answered this state’s call in 1861 to repel an invading federal army. Some of these men would die on battlefields and several returned home with missing limbs, eyes, and to destruction by the invading army that excels the worst of any victors in any country’s history. Total war was waged on the South; many women, children and men, too old or too young to fight would die. Blacks would fare even worse as they were only considered contraband by the Yankee army. Many would be raped and robbed of what little they had.
Theron Bass
King City
(The letter-writer is a former resident of Siler City.)