Alamance NAACP won't appeal decision on Confederate statue
Hundreds of protesters and a group of counter-protesters gathered in front of the Alamance Courthouse in 2020 as they clashed over the fate of the Confederate monument. PAUL GARBER/WFDD FILE
Multiple outlets are reporting the Alamance NAACP will not proceed with a lawsuit to remove a Confederate statue from in front of the county courthouse.
The NAACP and other Alamance plaintiffs were trying to relocate the statue from one of the most prominent places in the county — on a Main Street square in Graham.
The lawsuit was filed in March of 2021. Plaintiffs argued that county officials illegally maintained a symbol of white supremacy in front of an active courthouse.
The state courts have not been sympathetic to those claims.
A superior court judge dismissed the lawsuit in September 2022. In March, a three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeals upheld the decision in favor of defendants including the county and its board of commissioners.
The Court found that a 2015 law passed by the legislature, known as the Monument Protection Law, required county officials to leave it in place.
The next appeal would have gone to the state Supreme Court, which has a Republican majority.
The monument was erected in 1914 during the Jim Crow segregation era when similar statues were raised in places of prominence across the South.
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