I've been following the story for a while of a Confederate statue in downtown Reidsville, which was knocked over in a car accident in November 2011. Well, ... there's now a replacement, which came at a mighty hefty price ($90,000). It's in the city-owned Greenview Cemetery, rather than downtown and the old statue has been donated to the Reidsville historical society. I guess this is the newest Confederate statue in our country.
In November 2013 the North Carolina Court of Appeals dismissed on standing grounds a lawsuit filed by a heritage group that sought to have the new statue put where the old one had been.
I do wonder about the cost -- which this story says was paid for by the driver's insurance company. As the NC Court of Appeals decision makes clear, the statue was public property (even though it was originally paid for by private funds). I am skeptical whether it was a good use of the city's money to buy a replacement statue. I would have thought the city had a better use of the money.
Oh well, I guess this episode of Civil War memory is closed. I have some more on the law and morality of building renaming (and monument removal) in an article in the South Texas Law Review back in 2010. The image is of the intersection in Reidsville where the Confederate statue used to stand.
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