by Sherryreed Robinson recalls being a teenager playing in her high school band on the steps of the Tyrrell County courthouse when she first saw the words “IN APPRECIATION OF OUR FAITHFUL SLAVES” engraved on a Confederate monument in Columbia, North Carolina. She recalls concentrating on those six phrases as she walked up to the 23-foot statue of a Confederate soldier.
Ms. Robinson, a junior in high school at the time, felt that slaves and faithful people were not compatible.
She joined a federal lawsuit demanding that the inscription of devoted slaves be covered or erased, some thirty years later, when the 123-year-old monument still stood over the Main Street of the historic town. According to the lawsuit, it is thought to be the only courthouse monument in the nation that textually conveys this kind of statement.
According to Ms. Robinson, 50, “I just remember thinking that slaves had to be so-called faithful or they would be punished or even worse.” Sitting on the courtroom grounds as an adult, the phrases made me wonder if Black people could actually get justice there.
A federal judge let part of the 2024 lawsuit to proceed earlier this year. County authorities have long argued that they are prohibited from moving or altering the statue due to a state monument protection legislation.
As the Trump administration reclaims Confederate imagery as part of a larger effort to change or reinterpret how American history is presented, the Columbia case is developing in the midst of a sort of reverse reckoning.
Using other people with similar names or initials, President Trump ordered the military in June to reinstate Confederate names that had been expunged from military installations. The National Park Service declared in early August that it would restore a statue of Confederate diplomat and general Albert Pike and put it back in a public space close to the Capitol. During the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Washington in 2020, protesters toppled the 11-foot statue and burned it on fire. Additionally, in 2023, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the return of a Confederate sculpture that had been taken out of Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery.
Concerned Citizens of Tyrrell County, a civic organization composed primarily of older Black citizens, sued the county last year in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
The lawsuit claimed that the faithful slave message violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by being racially discriminatory government speech. The county was ordered to take down or conceal the message.
Beyond the court pleadings, county manager and lawyer David Clegg declined to comment. The defendants claimed legislative immunity and that they were subject to a 2015 North Carolina monument protection statute that restricted the time that an object of commemoration on public land could be moved or changed in their October 2024 motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
It states that the North Carolina Court of Appeals has decided that county commissioners are subject to this Act and that those commissioners are not acting with discriminatory intent. Because Tyrrell County chose to abide by state law, it shouldn’t be held accountable.
Even though the Civil War ended 160 years ago, Confederate symbols that are displayed on courthouse grounds, loom over town squares, and are affixed to schools, streets, and parks are still praised, disputed, and utilized as a prism through which to view American history and racial relations. Confederate imagery is viewed by some as racist and an insulting homage to the Lost Cause. Advocates argue that they are a means of commemorating the wartime sacrifices made by warriors.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization, claims that over 2,000 Confederate insignia can still be found in public areas around the country.
According to Rivka Maizlish, a senior research analyst with the institute who specializes in tracing the symbols, this is about history, memory, and power. The goal of these discussions surrounding Confederate statues is to thwart a propaganda effort that seeks to obscure the fact that the Civil War was actually a conflict between slavery and freedom.
Tyrrell County’s conflict is similar to that in other locations, primarily tiny Southern towns and rural areas, where neighbors occasionally disagree on how to commemorate slavery and the Civil War. The town of Edenton, which is about 30 miles distant, is also involved in a court dispute over the removal of its Confederate monument from its waterfront location. However, the specimen that most closely resembles the one in Columbia is located in Fort Mill, South Carolina’s Confederate Park and uses the phrase “faithful slaves.”
Few people wanted to discuss the monument and the case in public on Main Street in Columbia, a riverfront town located 150 miles east of Raleigh.
However, a community Facebook page provided insight into the sentiments of some Tyrrell County residents and others. Some felt ashamed of the devoted slave rhetoric, calling it a holdover from a horrific past. Others believed that relocating or changing the monument would essentially erase history. They said that their Southern pride and tradition were being unfairly assaulted, and they considered the statue as a means of paying tribute to veterans.
As part of a series of Confederate memorials built during the Jim Crow era starting in the late 1800s, the statue has been located next to the courthouse’s entrance since 1902. According to the complaint, it was a gift from the Tyrrell Monument Association, which was established by William Fessenden Beasley, a former lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army. On top of a pedestal with a bust of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the monument depicts a Confederate soldier. The inscription “faithful slave” is found on one of the statue’s panels.
Among those inscribed on the memorial is the name of Mark Snell Brickhouse’s great-great-grandfather. He frequently travels back to Columbia to see the memorial and a family cemetery.
Mr. Brickhouse, 72, remarked, “I adore the statue because it honors my family members.” However, I can understand how some people could find the words insulting. The statue should remain, in my opinion, since it honors our past, but those remarks ought to be removed.
Concerned Citizens of Tyrrell County have been advocating for the statue’s removal from the courthouse grounds since the 1990s. In order to make things easier and to spare the next generation of pupils from having to view the words, they have just started to concentrate on deleting the inscription.
The group constructed billboards, spoke at commission meetings, and staged public marches and demonstrations over the years.
Joyce Sykes Fitch, a plaintiff in the case who can trace her family’s history in the area back before the Civil War, stated, “I’ve had the statue my entire life, but I didn’t know the message about faithful slaves was there.” I didn’t find out what it stated until I returned to North Carolina in 2017 after retiring and making the decision to get active in the community. The existence of those words still seems unbelievable.
In the case, the plaintiffs are described as belonging to a small Black population of less than 1,000 persons in Tyrrell County, approximately one-third of whom are direct descendants of the people the county is discussing through the message of faithful slaves.
According to Ian Mance, a lawyer with the racial justice advocacy and litigation group Emancipate NC, this is the only memorial of its kind at a courtroom that uses the language of admiration or promotion of slavery. Families that have lived here since before the Civil War are the ones you are discussing. They feel as though this monument is making a statement about their families.
According to Mr. Mance, damages were not sought in this lawsuit. “We argue that the government itself cannot make racially discriminatory statements because equal protection does not apply,” he said. The statue symbolizes government discourse because it is located on government property.
