Brandon Tester | Daily Journal Workers load the Confederate monument onto the bed of a truck after removing it from Harrington Square on Wednesday afternoon. The removal process began Wednesday morning, as workers used a crane to lift the 15-ton monument from its base and transfer it to a truck.
City workers lift the Confederate monument in Harrington Square in downtown Rockingham out of the ground and onto a truck Wednesday afternoon.
Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal
Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal City workers lift the Confederate monument in Harrington Square in downtown Rockingham out of the ground and onto a truck Wednesday afternoon.
Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal
City workers lift the Confederate monument in Harrington Square in downtown Rockingham out of the ground and onto a truck Wednesday afternoon.
Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal
City workers begin excavation of the Confederate monument in Harrington Square in downtown Rockingham Wednesday morning.
Neel Madhavan | Daily Journal
ROCKINGHAM — City workers removed the Confederate monument from Harrington Square Wednesday afternoon, the culmination public outcry over its racist history over recent months.
The City of Rockingham began the removal process in August in an effort to avoid any potential acts of vandalism, City Manager Monty Crump said, though it ultimately wasn’t enough. On the morning of Sept. 5, the monument was discovered with the message “Don’t forget BLM” spray painted over the engraving of “Lest we forget” and the Confederate flag on the monument had been blacked out.
The monument had since been cleaned, and the police had increased their patrols over the area to prevent further damage since. Crump revealed that there had been multiple threats made since nationwide protests broke out following the death of George Floyd in police custody in May.
Moving the 15-ton monument was a difficult task — not just because of its size, but also because its concrete base was connected to the road base of the old U.S. Hwy. 1, which at one point ran through the intersection where Harrington Square is now located.
The first attempt to lift the monument failed. A crane was lifting up from from the top with chains while a tractor lifted from the bottom, but the tractor was lifted off its tracks. A short time later, they brought a larger crane that was able to handle the monument on its own and put it onto the bed of a tractor-trailer.
The monument will eventually 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.
That move will be completed once efforts to prepare for the monument’s arrival at the Memorial Park are finished. Crump said workers need to dig a hole where the monument will be located, and tracks need to be put in place to facilitate the monument’s arrival, among other tasks.
The monument will remain in storage until the VFW location is prepared. The monument was erected on Nov. 14, 1930 by the Pee Dee Guards Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy of Richmond County.
The Daughters’ racist history is well documented. In 1926, the Daughters erected a monument, “In commemoration of the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction period” in Concord, North Carolina, according to the Institute for Southern Studies.
Neel Madhavan and Brandon Tester contributed to this report.
