Visiting the Robeson County Courthouse has always been solemn and painful for the Rev. Derek McNair.
Every field trip as a kid, every stop at the tax office as an adult, McNair has had to face the towering Confederate statue in front of the courthouse on Elm Street in downtown Lumberton. When he sees it, he lowers his head and hurries into the building.
“It was just never a good feeling to know that you have any form of business at the Robeson County Courthouse,” said McNair, who is Black. “That statue brings a darkness, an evilness, a wickedness, a spirit of injustice over people who were enslaved and oppressed by the Confederacy.”
McNair and his fellow members of Ministers for Justice of Robeson County are frustrated by the statue’s presence in Robeson, one of the most diverse counties in America.
County commissioners voted 6-2 in late 2022 to move the statue to Memorial Park, a planned green space downtown. (More than three years later, the monument remains at the courthouse.) But the Ministers for Justice group doesn’t want the statue in a city park, either, arguing that it belongs in a Confederate cemetery or other privately owned space.
McNair said the monument, which features an unnamed Confederate soldier standing atop an obelisk, represents the worst parts of U.S. history.
“In this day and age, it doesn’t bring what we’re looking for in the county, as a sense of unity, with our brothers and sisters of all nationalities. It still echoes the division between us,” said McNair, vice president of Ministers for Justice. “It still shows and displays the injustice against African-Americans, the Native Americans, as well as Hispanic Americans.”
Robeson is one of the most diverse counties in America. More than 39% of residents Native American—most of them members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, which gained full federal recognition from Congress in December. About 23% of residents are Black, and about 7% are Hispanic.
Like many Confederate monuments, the Lumberton statue went up decades after the end of the Civil War. Then-Gov. Robert Glenn, a white supremacist, spoke at the monument’s dedication ceremony on May 10, 1907, according to records from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill About 7,000 people attended.
An announcement of the ceremony in The Robesonian said the monument would honor local Confederate soldiers who “were true to the tradition of steadfastness and courage that for ages have made the Scotchman in battle the mainstay of patriotism and the dread of his enemies.”
The statue has had plenty of critics. Attorney David Ferrell Branch Jr. sent a letter to county commissioners in 2022 urging them to remove the monument, which he said was “inspired by the white supremacy campaign that took place in the state of North Carolina.”
“Make no mistake, the era in which this statue was erected on our courthouse premises was one of the darkest times involving race relations, equality and justice in our State,” Branch wrote in the letter, which was published online by The Robesonian. “Civil War era symbols like the one at the steps of our courthouse are physical reminders that Blacks were systematically disadvantaged in our political system, in our justice system and in our society during the Jim Crow and white supremacy days in the early 20th century.”
Branch told the Border Belt Independent on Tuesday that the Robeson County Bar met with county attorneys in July and learned that a committee would be appointed to relocate the statue to a traffic circle at a park. He said he hasn’t heard any updates since then.
Robeson County and Lumberton officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Border Belt Independent about the planned park.
Branch said he does not want the statue in a downtown green space, where it would be highly visible.
“I want it away from the courthouse. I think it sends the wrong signal standing in front of the courthouse, for the reason that it was placed there—that is where my heartburn is in all of this,” he said. “But I feel by moving it to the city park, and the roundabout, I don’t think that was such a good idea either.”
Thirty-seven Confederate memorials have been relocated or removed in 21 North Carolina counties since 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many were removed after nationwide protests erupted following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020.
That year, Louisburg in Franklin County moved a 106-year-old statue from Main Street to a municipal cemetery with Confederate graves. The following year, Asheville dismantled a statue of former N.C. Gov. and Confederate officer Zebulon Vance and moved it to an undisclosed location.
North Carolina law prohibits the permanent removal of statues, unless they are a threat to public safety. Statues cannot be moved or altered without approval from the North Carolina Historical Commission. However, they can be relocated to a site of similar “prominence, honor, visibility, availability, and access” that does not include museums, cemeteries, or mausoleums.
“It’s unfortunate when the legislature takes action like that,” Branch said. “I think removing or moving Confederate statues ought to be a local decision. Our county should not have their hands tied as far as issues like this.”
David Edge, who has served on the Robeson County Board of Commissioners since 2011 and was elected chairman last year, voted against the local statue’s move in 2022. He said the monument is a nod to Confederate heritage and has nothing to do with race.
“That statue has not hurt anybody for 100 years,” said Edge, who is white. “You can bring anything or find anything to be contaminated to feel like you have a problem with it. I can see things all over the highway that I would like to not see, but that statue has not hurt anyone in all these years. There’s people that want it there, there’s people whose ancestors put it there for a reason.”
Tyrone Watson helped lead a community push to have the statue removed. But he said he resigned from his post as president of the Robeson County branch of the NAACP in 2023 in part because advocating for the statue’s removal took an emotional toll. He was frustrated by the commission’s decision to move the monument to another public site.
“It’s just a slap in the face and an insult,” he said. “The board has made a mockery out of the whole movement and the whole campaign to have that Confederate statue moved from public property. It’s a mockery—they made a mockery of us.”
The Border Belt Independent reached out to other commissioners. Besides Edge, only Pauline Campbell responded. She said she supported the board’s decision to move the statue to Memorial Park.
The Rev. Steve Taylor, a member of Ministers for Justice, said the Confederate statue is a visceral reminder of white supremacy and could deter visitors and newcomers, no matter where it is located.
“They are not going to want to be associated with a community that has that kind of narrative as their standard prayer,” he said. “If we move it from the courthouse and then put it into the park that acts as our kind of gateway into our city, I don’t know if the narrative changes.”
Ministers for Justice wrote in a letter to The Robesonian in November that the statue ignores the bloodshed and violence that Black and Native American residents endured.
“If we are to claim heritage, we must claim all of it—the courage and sacrifice, yes, but also the horror and bondage that sustained an inhuman system,” the group wrote. “The confederate statue represents this legacy in bronze, not as lament but as celebration. To place it at the front door of our community—whether at the courthouse or in the new park—sends the wrong message about who we are and what we value.”