Asheville Reporter

Buncombe County Commissioners followed the lead of Asheville City Council to call for the removal of two Confederate statues and moving forward on figuring out how to legally remove the Vance Monument.

The county and city partnered to give the United Daughters of the Confederacy 90 days to remove the two memorials to part of the state’s Confederate history, the Buncombe County said in a news release posted to its website on June 18. 

There is a monument at the Buncombe County Courthouse honoring the 60th Regiment of North Carolina Confederate soldiers and one in Pack Square Park known as the Robert E. Lee Dixie Highway, Col. John Connally Marker, the news release said. 

“Removing monuments does not erase history. What it does is remove the constant visual reminder of a system that didn’t treat African Americans as equitable,” Commissioner Amanda Edwards told the board on June 16, the news release reported. “We have much work to do in order to undo and address racial and systemic inequities. We must be committed to listening to those most impacted by inequality… to make our community more inclusive, fair, and just.”

The Vance Monument presents a more difficult task as ownership of the monument isn’t clear, so they don't know if a 2015 state law that prohibits moving a monument from public land unless it is relocated to a site of similar prominence applies, the news release reported. 

The city and county will appoint a 12-member task force to get public input and make recommendations for the monument’s future, which would include removing it, repurposing it or relocating it, the news release reported. The task force will have three months to come back to the governing bodies to make a report.