North Carolina town is being sued for trying to resolve the issue of relocating a confederate monument behind closed doors. The suit filed by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, on behalf of five plaintiffs who live in Edenton, seeks to block a deal that would transfer ownership of the monument from the town of Edenton to Chowan County. In addition to transferring ownership of the confederate monument the deal also would call for it to be moved from its current waterfront location in downtown Edenton to the Chowan County Courthouse where it was originally erected. The move is in exchange for the United Daughters of Confederacy and two other neo-Confederate groups dropping an earlier lawsuit for a previous attempt to remove the monument.
The lawsuit argues that the deal was made through several meetings that were held away from the public eye by abusing North Carolina’s open meeting law. The law states that public bodies such as town councils are allowed to hold private meetings, or closed sessions, to discuss legal matters with an attorney obtained by the body. However public bodies are not allowed to hold closed sessions to discuss policy matters.
Meaning the body could discuss the details of the lawsuit brought on by the United Daughters of the Confederacy but any deal making should have been done publicly, not behind closed doors. Therefore, the plaintiffs lawyer Jake Sussman argues, the town council misused the open meeting law and were not justified in making the deal in closed session.
This monument, a 26 foot tall bronze statue of a non-descript Confederate soldier, has been the topic of controversy for several years now. In 2020 the town council first considered moving the monument during a time when a discussion of systemic racism was taking the national stage. A year later the town’s Human Relations Commission recommended to the council that the monument be moved. In 2022 while the new location of the monument was being contemplated a group of activists known as Move the Monument Coalition held protests calling for the removal of the monument. When the town attempted to move the monument to a local park, they were met with a restraining order issued by a superior court judge halting the move due to a suit filed by the three neo-confederate groups.
This was the last action on the matter until it was revealed in late 2024 that a deal was struck behind closed doors. Leading to this most recent lawsuit. One of the plaintiffs in the suit, Rod Phillips, expressed disappointment in the way the town handled the matter in a press release. “Removing the public’s input and voice from something so important to the folks who live and work in Edenton is no way to do business or run a local government,” said Phillips. He condemned the secrecy and the act of the government operating behind closed doors. “We believe that this and every Confederate monument is a symbol of white supremacy. I know not everyone agrees with that, but I don’t think anyone would agree that it’s OK for elected officials to hide behind closed doors while making important decisions… That’s not how a representative government is supposed to work.”
The lawsuit brings other objections to the process behind the deal, including the matter of giving the monument from one local body of government to another citing a state law that “does not authorize real or personal property to be conveyed as a gift from a unit of local government to another.” Though the lawsuit brings complaints against the deal that was made it does not suggest what to do with the monument, instead focusing on the unlawfulness of the process behind the deal. Sussman reiterates this point, noting that there will still be work to be done, conversations to be had and that “This lawsuit really focuses on these kinds of conversations having to happen in the sunlight.”
