EDENTON – The Town of Edenton began dismantling its controversial Confederate monument Tuesday, less than 24 hours after a court lifted a restraining order that had protected the structure for more than two years.
On August 26, town crews removed all of the brick patio around the monument’s base and took down flags from surrounding flagpoles at the South Broad Street site, which was blocked off with red tape and traffic cones. The action came one day after a court lifted the restraining order on August 25.
Tuesday afternoon, Edenton Chief David LaFon was at the site, talked separately with Stella Brothers, one of the five plaintiffs in a still-pending lawsuit against the Town of Edenton and Chowan County regarding their agreement on the statue, and Michael Dean, president of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Edenton Bell Battery.
Dean said he was there to take photos at the site to send to the group’s lawyers. SCV plans to appeal Monday’s ruling and request a new restraining order. If that order is approved, the parts that were removed at the moment will have to be replaced.
During our staff’s time on the scene, Town of Edenton employees had removed the bricks from around the statue’s base and put them into a truck. A bucket truck from the Electric Department arrived shortly afterward, and crews cleared the flags from the flagpoles.
LaFon said the bricks were moved to prepare the ground for sod as part of an upcoming landscaping project.
The monument has been at the base of South Broad Street since the 1960s, after being moved from its original location on the 1767 Chowan County Courthouse Green. A temporary restraining order has been in place since March 2023, when a Superior Court judge issued the document preventing its relocation. The order was granted after several groups whose members are related to Confederate veterans filed a civil lawsuit challenging the town’s unanimous vote to move the structure to Hollowell Park.
Town Issues Statement
The Town of Edenton initially declined to provide details about the removal process, posting a brief statement on Facebook on Tuesday: “The Town of Edenton is aware of public interest regarding the recent removal of the monument. At this time, the Town will not be providing detailed comments. A formal public statement will be released at a later date. We appreciate the community’s patience and understanding as we work through this process.”
The cautious response has drawn criticism from some residents who question whether proper procedures were followed.
“Why would a post like this be acceptable from a governing body?” one resident commented on the town’s Facebook page. “This is not how a town should address/approach such things. A statement should be put out BEFORE you remove a monument and assure your community proper channels have been followed.”
Later in the afternoon, the town issued a statement, which appears below the story. It reads:
With due respect to the citizens of the Town on both sides of the issue, the Town Council is pleased that the Court has dismissed the case that prevented the Town from relocating the Monument as approved by the Town Council in February of 2022.
Today the Town of Edenton began its investigation into the steps required to relocate the Monument, including removing some of the brick patio to study the actual foundation to be sure the Monument is not damaged in the relocation process.
The Town’s landscape plan for the Monument space is tailored to the upcoming fall and winter seasons, ensuring our public areas – including those associated with the Monument – are maintained with the dignity and care that Edenton deserves. This will be an interim plan until the Colonial Park improvement plan to accommodate Harbortown approved by the Town Council on August 13, 2024 is implemented.
Deep Community Divisions Remain
The monument’s fate has divided the community for years, with weekly protests and counterprotests continuing even during the legal stalemate. Social media reaction to the removal reflects those same deep divisions.
“So sad that folks want to erase history,” wrote one resident. “A lot can be learned from history right or wrong and this will be another part of history that will be remembered for the later!”
Others welcomed the action. “Everyone will get over it. Just like how Civil Rights is being erased and white supremacy is being celebrated. You’ll survive.”
Several residents criticized the lack of advance notice, with some expressing surprise that the removal had begun.
Legal Questions Remain
The specific terms of the court order lifting the restraining order remain unclear, as the document has not yet been signed and made publicly available.
A Memorandum of Understanding between Edenton and Chowan County includes the sale of the monument from the town to the county, along with moving the monument and all associated landscaping to Veterans Park, located at the corner of East Queen and Court streets.
This is a developing story. Additional details will be reported as they become available, including the full text of the court order lifting the restraining order. This story was updated with the Town of Edenton’s statement at 4:20 p.m. Aug. 26, 2025.
6 responses to “Breaking News: Edenton Removes Bricks and Flags Around Confederate Statue”
How stupid does one have to be to serve on the Edenton town council?! Just extremely ignorant to remove this piece of history. A memorial to the dead too much for them to handle I guess. Sickening that humans who have so little to offer, get away with doing such as this.
The appellate process involves filing a written Notice of Appeal after a written order is entered by the trial judge. That written order of the trial judge is expected soon. When an appeal is taken to the Court of Appeals, that court also has the power to stay any action under the trial judge’s order until the appeal is decided.
The case involves the monument itself and there never were any restrictions on the surrounding plaza. It is somewhat disconcerting that the town is not only trying to remove a memorial to fallen soldiers who were defending their homeland, but their very first act included unnecessarily removing the American flag from the site.
One big question on the Memorandum of Understanding is only only the question of whether the proposed new site meets the requirements of the Monuments Protection Act but whether that site is physically stable enough to support the weight of the monument. One of the county commissioners raised the issue of obtaining a proper evaluation of the site to resolve this issue but the entire commission failed to approve it.
There is information that there was previously a creek in this area and there are now large underground drain pipes. This area is also prone to small sinkholes developing, one of which appeared and was repaired only a few weeks ago. This raises huge issues about what conditions exist underground that are causing them and what that indicates about the stability of the ground in that location to support a very heavy monument.
I would note that similar sinkholes appear from time to time in a subdivision in Onslow County where my wife and I own a rental property. In that case these sinkholes appear along the lines of large underground corrugated metal drainage pipes installed 40 or 50 years ago by a developer that are now deteriorating. Not only has this caused numerous small sinkholes of a foot or two or three in diameter, but also at least one large pipe failure. That occurred during a hurricane when there was a large volume of water passing through the pipes , and it caused a large crater, 25 or so feet long, about 10 feet deep and about 10 feet wide, with remaining sections of pipe at each end still carrying water flow.
Positioning a monument of the weight of this one on or near such a pipe could itself cause such a major rupture and topple the monument, or the weight combined with pressure from a large water blow could do so.
Monday was a sad day for our heritage and our history. It is appalling that some zealots still trot out a false connection to white supremacy or Jim Crow, which were actually a partisan political power play that had nothing to do with fallen soldiers or the War Between the States. White supremacy and Jim Crow were an evil episode in our history, but the blame should fall on the political party that foisted that on our state and our region, not those who had nothing to do with it. Ironically, many of the zealots who falsely try to link monuments to fallen soldiers to white supremacy and / or Jim Crow are registered to vote as members of the very political party that is wholly responsible for imposing white supremacy and Jim Crow on our state and region.
Sad, sad day for Edenton and Chowan County. I would be curious to hear from Towny officials as to what the big rush is, after all, NONE of the sides on the Monument issue are happy with this so whom are they trying to appease by spending (wasting) thousands of taxpayer dollars for what they themselves describe as an “…Interim…” landscape plan.
Are Edenton residents please with THEIR money being used to remake, and REMAKE AGAIN the same bit of ground? I understand not waiting until the last minute, but why pack your bags for your 2026-2027 vacation now?
There are thousands upon thousands of books on the War between the States and how there were 100’s of thousands of dead as a result, YET EVER SO FEW will reference the local boys of Chowan County that died. Why is Edenton, the County seat, so quick to erase from memory her very own local war heros?
Very sad indeed, and a waste of money in my opinion.
[…] Town of Edenton began dismantling its Confederate monument Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the court lifted a restraining order that had protected the structure for […]
The Citizens of Edenton- the ones that actually live in Edenton and Chowan County, should question the timing of this event. A few out-of-town people originally stirred this issue up and got a few locals to join them. It is not about race and never has been.
The monument is not a memory of slavery or the war. It is a memorial to those who were willing to give their life for their county. It is a memorial, a reminder. It should remind all of us that we were divided, brother against brother, and neighbor against neighbor. And we should all stand at that monument and remember what that war did to our nation. Any one of us can be sincere in what believe is right, but still be sincerely wrong. It is easy to judge those from our past, but it is impossible for any one of us to walk in their shoes. Even if we do not agree with every war, soldier or political view, every memorial is place for reflection. If we do not keep the memorials to remember our past, we will never learn how to live a life that set a positive path for our children’s future.
In addition, Money talks, moves mountains, and it seems to move historical monuments too. Could the true reason they want to get this monument out of the way is because something is coming to town? We have spent over $52,000 in tax papers money on the monument issue. And there are many more important areas where this money could have been spent. How much of this money could have been spent helping our poor? We must ask, a small group stirred the pot, but who in the end will it really help? Who is greasing the wheel on this monument issue? And what developer, business or person stands to gain financially when the monument is moved? Are those who are stirring the pot, just trying to divide us? Have we learned from our past? Just a few questions from the rest of us country, common sense folks.
Having worked for five and a half years in eastern Europe, I have personally seen too many examples of historic monuments destroyed for political reasons by extremists, mostly by the communists but some going back as far as the nazis. It is sad to see the same thing now happening in our country. We need to remember that the two radical, Marxist-led groups that attacked monuments in the 2020-2021 riots attacked a lot more than Confederate historical monuments Monuments to founding fathers, multiple US presidents, great explorers, and even Union monuments for the War Between the States were attacked. At least two World War II monuments were attacked right here in North Carolina. These fanatics are engaged in what is really a War on History. It is sad to see politicians with no backbone cave in to them.
These same two radical groups were also active in attacking monuments in Europe. In the UK that included monuments to Sir Winston Churchill, Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, and even Earl Grey, the prime minister who abolished slavery in the UK, as well as the main British World War II monument in London. In France, President Macron stood firm and gave a nationally televised speech in which he declared that no one would be erased from French history, no monuments would come down, and those who attacked monuments would be arrested.
George Orwell described the sad surrender we are seeing when he wrote, “the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history,” and “the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”