Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal
                                Public works staff cleans black spray paint off of monument in Harrington Square in downtown Rockingham Saturday afternoon.

Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal

Public works staff cleans black spray paint off of monument in Harrington Square in downtown Rockingham Saturday afternoon.

<p>Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal</p>
                                <p>Where the monument read, “Lest we forget,” referring to the Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War, the message was spray-painted over, “Don’t forget BLM,” an abbreviation of Black Lives Matter. </p>

Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal

Where the monument read, “Lest we forget,” referring to the Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War, the message was spray-painted over, “Don’t forget BLM,” an abbreviation of Black Lives Matter.

<p>Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal</p>
                                <p>The Confederate flag and the word “Confederacy” were blacked out on the front side of the monument.</p>

Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal

The Confederate flag and the word “Confederacy” were blacked out on the front side of the monument.

<p>Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal</p>
                                <p>Public works staff and Rockingham Police stand by as spray paint is cleaned off monument by public works staff.</p>

Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal

Public works staff and Rockingham Police stand by as spray paint is cleaned off monument by public works staff.

ROCKINGHAM — The Confederate monument in Harrington Square in downtown Rockingham has been vandalized with black spray paint.

The engraving of the Confederate flag on the side facing Harrington Square has been blacked out and one of the mentions of the Confederacy has been blacked out from the line reading “…Pee Dee Guards Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy…”

On the back side, where the engraving reads, “Lest we forget,” it was written in black, “Don’t forget BLM,” referring to “Black Lives Matter.”

Public works staff began cleaning off the paint around mid-day Saturday.

“It was spray painted during the night,” said Rockingham City Manager Monty Crump. “Someone reported it to me and I passed it on to the police chief and they’re handling it from there.”

Rockingham Police Lt. George Gillenwater said that RPD is aware of the incident and is “currently looking into the matter.” The cost of damage was a few hours of labor for city staff, Crump said, without providing specifics.

On Aug. 12, Crump initiated the administrative removal of the monument with no objections from the City Council. About a week later, Crump announced that the monument would be moved to the Richmond County Veterans Memorial Park located across the street from Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 4203 at 106 Old River Rd.

“We hope to have it moved in the next couple of weeks,” Crump said. “They’ll get it cleaned before it gets moved. We’re going to step up patrols and keep an eye on it.”

Crump revealed Saturday that part of the reason he initiated the removal was because of multiple threats that had been made against the monument in the weeks following the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25. In one “glaring example,” Crump said, police stopped a white man walking towards the Confederate monument with a sledgehammer, intending to destroy it, the night after the Black Lives Matter march down East Broad Avenue on Sunday, May 31. Crump said that police body cam footage captured the conversation between the man and police in which he admitted his intent and police convinced him to go home.

“This is the kind of stuff we tried to avoid,” Crump said Saturday afternoon of the spray paint on the monument. “(The night of May 31) emotions were running high — (the man with the sledgehammer) is a glaring example of what we were dealing with leading up to the decision to move the monument.”

Crump added that police are checking cameras on surrounding buildings to see if they captured the culprit behind the spray paint.

Maggi Chambers, one of the people who wrote in to the Rockingham City Council at their August meeting to argue that the monument be removed from public property, commented on social media after this article was posted that the spray paint does not represent the views of the local movement against the monument.

“Myself and the other organizers do not condone this at all. All of our demands have been met, all of the protestors are back in school, the city is being cooperative, and we have nothing to gain from defacing the monument,” Chambers wrote. “We wanted the history to be preserved in its original form. We have absolutely NOTHING TO GAIN from this. We went through the lengthy democratic process, and we were excited to see it in its new home, where it belongs.”

Justus Ellerbe, one of the organizers of the demonstration in front of the monument this summer in which they gave out free food and school supplies to those in need while pushing the message of Black Lives Matter, was shocked to find out about the vandalism to the monument when reached for comment.

“Definitely, in our community, we don’t condone this,” Ellerbe said. “Defacing property, when I see that I think, ‘Ok, this is more ammunition for people who don’t support our movement.’ … It’s more ammunition for them to say that we’re ‘another group who just commits crimes and we don’t have to listen.’”

The trickle down effect of acts like this include the perpetrator now having a criminal record, Ellerbe said, which limits their opportunity in the future. Among the group of local activists that sought the monument’s removal, Ellerbe said he doesn’t foresee them taking any formal steps in the future other than to denounce vandalism.

“I don’t think we necessarily have control or have any say over what someone who is tired of these injustices will do,” Ellerbe said.

Ellerbe added that he can see how “people could be turned off” to the movement by acts like this.

“Don’t let this destruction move your mindset off what Black Lives Matter actually means and the injustices going on in this nation,” Ellerbe said.

Reach Neel Madhavan at [email protected]. Reach Gavin Stone at [email protected].