 So Charmaine if you could mention that we're gonna do comment first. Oh yours isn't out? Oh, thank goodness. Don't forget the mic is live. I'm doing okay. It would definitely not be work. No, I just thought you two, they know about it. What? Our event assembly. Yeah, no, I just wanted you to know. This is one I won't make this time. I know it's too much in a row. Yeah, I suppose we're working on a book. So thank you. All right, two full days. Thank you so much. We had our fall break last week. Oh, I appreciate it. Is that Dominique and stuff? Is that Stephanie? Yes, good. So we definitely have to, oh, I don't feel too bad. Maybe Eliza didn't follow it. If you want to make public comment or sign ups, sheets over here. Yes, silly. I said that. It would be nice. Wait, wait, wait. Charmaine? Gendis? Yeah. Oh, I did get one. William's getting it. Oh, he's bringing it in. Okay. Good evening. It is 701. So let's get started. I'm Charmaine McKissick-Melton co-chair and we'd of course like to read our statement as we always do at the beginning of every meeting. We'd like to welcome and thank, first of all, the committee for serving and thank you to the public for coming and sharing. This is a public inclusive and educational project for all. And we put a high priority on gathering as much public input as possible. As you can see from our committee members, we've assembled an excellent group that represents a cross section of our community, both young, old, different races and genders from across the city and county. We do expect our discussions to be passionate and energetic, but also civil and constructive. At every meeting, we have an invited speaker who's an expert on some aspect of our charge. We will also have time for public comment and committee discussion. This will be the last meeting in these chambers. As a reminder, this process is not meant to address the rights or the wrongs of how the statute came down. Our charge is very specific and forward looking and is meant to lead to a final report with recommendations. So I'll read those charges and then we'll get ready for a public comment tonight before our speaker. Number one, engage the Durham community in an expansive and transparent public process regarding public monuments and other remnants of the Confederacy present in Durham. Number two, propose to the county commission a plan of dispensation for the Confederate monument torn down outside of the old courthouse as well as the base of that monument that remains. Number three, catalog all known Confederate monuments and other remnants of the Confederacy or the history of enslavement existing in Durham. And four, propose the city council and county commission as appropriate a plan for dispensation of such monuments and remnants. And lastly five, in addition to committee may choose at its discretion to solicit recommendations from the public for people events locations missing from Durham's historical narrative to be recognized in future public efforts. So again, thank you committee for serving. It's been a few months that we've all been working together. And we want to thank the Durham community for coming out to all of our various public meetings and hearing from the diverse forces. So we'll start now with public comment before we have our speaker for tonight. Just to have the committee members introduce each other. Oh, I'm sorry. I got that. Yeah. I want to start down with this. Good evening. My name is Dominique Walker. I've been a resident here in Durham County for the past three, four years. I was a graduate student of North Carolina Central University. Hello, I'm Elizabeth Sappenfield. I'm the former president of Preservation Durham, which is the citywide nonprofit historic preservation organization. I'm a Raleigh native and I've lived in Durham for 10 years. Hi, my name's Deanne Varose. I'm an assistant professor of public policy and political science at Duke. And my research focuses on US social policy with an emphasis on higher education. My name is William O'Quinn. I'm a native of Durham. My family's been here for over 200 years. I grew up on a tobacco farm in Durham and I manage my family's Black Angus cattle farm. I'm a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp in Durham. I'm a resident of North Carolina Central University in Durham. I've been at camp and also the North Carolina Division Sons of Confederate Veterans as well as a reenactor in the company I have. Six North Carolina, which happened to be the same company and regiment as my great-great-grandfather and his brothers. Charmaine McKissick-Melton, associate professor of mass communication at North Carolina Central University and a native of Durham. Good evening. I'm Susanna Lee. I teach history at North Carolina State University and I live in Durham. Hi, I'm Barbara Lau. I'm the director of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice and the Pauli Murray Project at the Duke Human Rights Center. I teach about Durham history and I've lived here for 20 years. Hi, I'm Watson Jenison. I've been a resident since 2006. I'm a professor of history at UNC Greensboro. My name is Robin Kirk. I'm the co-chair with my colleague Dr. Charmaine McKissick-Melton. I teach at Duke University and I am a human rights person. Good evening. My name is Stephanie Diane Ford. I am a local filmmaker here based in Durham. So I think if there's anyone else who would like to sign up for public comment, if you could do so at this time. Dominique over there has the sign ups just so that we know who you are and we can also contact you later when we finish our report. I think my colleague has some of the people signed up. We had to change a little bit the format of today's meeting because our speaker had a class. So he will be coming a little bit after 7.30 and then we'll sort of flipping the order here. So who is the first person for me? First person is Gary Foreman. And if you could make sure to keep it to three minutes, that would be great. Yes. My name is Gary Foreman. I have lived in and loved Durham for over 45 years and I have attended a good many of your excellent meetings. This evening I wish to offer brief comment on the two prominent here most often heard reasons for actually restoring the monument. One being good law and order and the other being use of public property and funds. In addition, I have a specific proposal that I would like to discuss law and order. History has always worked well for those formulating what is considered good law and order, but not so much for those subject to it. And our history here, the institutions of slavery and the Jim Crow era were maintained by what was considered good law and order. Caused much suffering and untold numbers of Afro-Americans. And now comes today with this monument issue and with its own regulations to maintain good law and order. I submit that having such awful precedence in our history for good law and order that such laws as this that's been shoved on us by Raleigh just a few years ago should be considered very carefully with caution for our community. Public property and funds, that phrase implies the approval of the public through democratic representation and through voting. In our history also, there has been vicious, even lethal repression of the voting rights of Afro-Americans using good law and order. By 1940, for example, only about 3% of Afro-Americans in the south were registered down from about around 90% in some states. This most certainly in 1924 when the statue was erected, our Afro-American community here in Durham was suffering and had little of anything to officially say about anything including usage of public property and public funds. Therefore, any quote public approvals for the monument were just not representative of our community. My proposal, it is perhaps altogether right that voices persist for remembering the history, the history of deep suffering that southern people endured during the war. And a monument may properly memorialize that suffering, but our Afro-American community also suffered then and was suffering also in 1924. That suffering is also part of our history. Why should our community memorialize the one and not the other? I propose that upon the possible restoration of the monument, that an effort be made to acknowledge and to accept this part of our history and suffering. I suggest a plaque be added to the display. The wording on that plaque would be from two specific city ordinances that existed during the time the monument was erected. Two ordinances that evidence historically just how racially conflicted our community was. One is from the 1928 city ordinances chapter 15 section 21 is titled separation of races and restaurants and it's pretty graphic. This action, this plaque that I'm proposing would be considered an acknowledgement of the suffering of our entire community with this issue. It would not be an admission or reckoning about guilt and hypocrisy that would serve as a catharsis for us all. A stimulus for all to wonder about and judge how far we have come and possibly how much farther we need to go to immediately resolve issues of race in our community. Further, such an action would be moving towards what Lincoln exhorted us all to do with one another and that I maintain this committee should do with its task. And that is to proceed with malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right that God gives us to see the right. Thank you. Next speaker is Thomas Beach. Tonight I'd like to talk about the dedication of the Memorial. It was back in May 10th of 1924 I think it was presentation the Memorial was by done by Judge R. H. Sykes presiding officer. The unveiling was Mrs. Jeanine Jenny Webb Crabtree. The acceptance of the Memorial was from Mayor J. M. Manning. A benediction was given by Reverend J. T. Bailey chaplain of the RF web camp. That's the picture of those camp members that were alive at the time. In the afternoon the veterans then went down to Maplewood Cemetery where they ended the day by paying tribute to the soldiers who were buried there from their troop. They gave them a gun salute and they ended with a prayer that day. Let me tell you what the mayor had to say about this this monument. This day May 10th has been set aside by the entire Southland to honor the memory of the Confederate soldier whether living or dead. The men who with his heroic patriotism followed the destinies of Lee and Jackson men who fought for the cause they knew was right. The great principles of states rights as enunciated in the Constitution of the United States and was and is now the bulwark of American liberty. Judge Sykes as mayor of the city I accept for the county of and the city of Durham this monument as a slight token. Though somewhat delayed of the admiration, love and respect which our people hold for the Confederate soldier. The memorial was then unveiled amid the applause of the multitude by Mrs. Jenny Web Crabtree and the exercise closed with a prayer by a Reverend J. T. Bailey chaplain of the RF web camp of veterans. Later they went out to a lunch or dinner rather at the YMCA about 150 people were in attendance. Now a lot of folks call Confederate soldiers traders they weren't. The United States Senate and the Congress confirmed that they were actually US veterans. There were no more traders than their grandfathers, their grand uncles, their grand cousins who fought in the American Revolution. Some called them traders had they lost they probably all would have been hung and we'd be. I don't know probably speaking Native American language right now because who knows what would have happened. The point of all this is that this is patriotism. It was not white supremacy. It was not bigotry. It was not a racial slur. It was not slavery. Clearly the belief that this was about states rights versus slavery is well known all the way back to 1924. You cannot rewrite history to make it fit your narrative for today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The last public comment we have listed today is George Robertson. Robeson, excuse me. Good afternoon. Make sure the mic is up so that we can hear me now. Yeah. I have one question. How many of you on this council on this bench on this committee has actually read a hard copy of the 13th Amendment by a show of hands? How many have you? So therefore you know that no state statue, legislative statue can see the 13th Amendment. It says that no Confederate flag, statue, or badges of honor shall be on any government, state, or municipal property, period. Now with God so far they accept it or not, they mean they broke the law. And as the judge always tells my people, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Now I'm sick of this. I didn't come here, but I had to because I sold it and put some steps and stuff up there for the Confederate monument. And I'm not going to have it. I would keep on break, keep on sipping the plane. And I will have. I would move for impeachment for every individual who keeps talking about leaving it there, period. I'm done with it. Thank you very much. We are still waiting for our speaker. So if you would like to make a public comment. This is a great time. name and contact information that would be wonderful. The last speaker spoke of Maplewood Cemetery, can you hear me there? I mentioned that there were two city ordinances in existence regarding race in 1924. I mentioned the one about separation of races and restaurants. The other is from the 1914 city ordinance to Chapter 4, Section 1. It reads, the city cemetery, known as Maplewood Cemetery, shall be used exclusively for the burial of white persons. Our next speaker is Kimberley Israel. Well, said my name is Kimberley Israel. Try to be coherent since I didn't know I was going to speak tonight. But one of the previous speakers mentioned the idea of states' rights as opposed to slavery. But it's also fairly well documented that during the Civil War, the states' right that the Confederacy was concerned about was both the right to own other human beings as slaves and the rights to force the northern states to cooperate with southern slavery. And I don't question the fact that people may have relatives who fought in the Confederacy and saw themselves as serving their country. But at the same time, I don't think we can deny that they were fighting for the wrong cause. And it's not a cause that is going to unite Durham here and now. Undoubtedly, there were also people in Germany in World War II who were just fighting for their country and maybe didn't support the Nazis. But we still don't put up statues of them. And so I think that in order to move forward, it's fine to have some of those monuments in a historical context for educational purposes. People said it's important not to forget our history, and that's certainly true. But at the same time, we shouldn't have those monuments putting up the Confederacy as something to be remembered publicly with affection. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. And one more public comment tonight from Anseldow. Hi, my name is Anseldow. I've lived in Durham for a year and a half, and I'm a UNC graduate of my distance. Good. I want to speak about what white supremacy was and what white supremacy is in North Carolina. In the antebellum era, white supremacy was white slave owners controlling and dominating the lives of their slaves. After the antebellum era, after the Civil War, white supremacy continued in the Jim Crow era with white people continuing to publicly dominate and control the lives of people of color. After the end of the Jim Crow era, white supremacy continued. And I think that this monument is a lasting vestige of white supremacy. It represents the power that white people have to publicly represent themselves as heroes and as powerful and benevolent leaders of society. To anyone who doesn't believe in what the Confederacy said for in slavery and oppression, the monument is disgusting. It's a physical representation of terror and of violence, and I don't think it has any place in public in Durham. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm very pleased to introduce our speaker for today, Scott Holmes, who is an assistant professor of law at North Carolina Central, where he supervises the Civil Litigation Clinic and teaches trial practice, appellate advocacy, criminal procedure, legal problems of the poor, and restorative justice. His clinic handles civil matters related to prison conditions, warehousing, police misconduct and evictions. His research and writing focus on how racial inequity impacts the rule of law. Before joining the faculty, he was a partner at the law firm, at the, at the Lachemi law firm, where he handled serious criminal cases in state and federal court at trial and on appeal. As some of you also know, he has represented the individuals who are accused of taking down both the Durham and the Silent Sam statues. And he's come to us to talk a little bit about his views on the legality of the statue. So please join me in welcoming Scott Holmes. Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you all tonight about some of the law or. It really is an honor to get to speak to you and share some thoughts. I hope they're helpful to you in your consideration about what to do with what's left of the monument here in Durham. The North Carolina Constitution has a couple of provisions that have to do with, one has to do with treason and loyalty to the United States government. And the other has to do with equal protection of the law and a prohibition on race discrimination. Neither of these provisions have been applied in the specific context of monuments. But there is a strong argument I urge upon you and will may urge upon other folks that monument, the Confederate monument constitutes government speech. And that is that is accepted constitutional law that monuments erected in public places, particularly a courthouse steps and city parks, university campuses constitute government speech. And the government isn't restricted in its speech. There are no time manner place restrictions on the government, the way the government can impose on private speakers. But there are some limits to government speech. The one we know most about arises from the establishment clause, which prohibits the government from endorsing or preferring religion or preferring one religion over another. And there is good constitutional law and good constitutional methods for the courts to analyze government speech that has to do with religion. I there there's reason to believe in our law that government speech is bounded not only by establishment clause, but it's also bounded by other important parts of our Constitution. That government speech is and should be limited by being like the Equal Protection Clause and the prohibitions against race discrimination and the prohibition against actions which support or celebrate treason. And so the same way that the government cannot prefer one religion over another, it cannot also endorse principles that celebrate racism, a history of racism, and the secession of the Confederacy from the Union. Another way to think about that is that our Constitution, our federal Constitution under the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment, announced a strong policy against slavery, against racism, and against the secession of the states to defend slavery. And therefore, if the government is going to engage in speech, the last thing it should do is celebrate that badges and incidents of slavery in the form of a Confederate soldier at our courthouse steps. And so I believe there is a strong legal argument, without any precedent, because this hasn't been well litigated yet, that Confederate monuments constitute government hate speech and are prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause and under our state Constitution, the law, the land clause, and the prohibition against racial discrimination. I find some support for this idea that the Equal Protection Clause is an outer limit to government speech. In this case called Pleasant Grove, City of Pleasant Grove versus Sumum, and that case was an establishment clause case. In that case, some folks wanted to put a monument in a public square, and the city decided we don't want to put that monument in our city square. And this was a religious group, and they were like, well, you have the Ten Commandments, and so if you have the Ten Commandments, you ought to put ours up, too. And so they were saying you are limiting our private speech, but not allowing us to use this public forum. Well, the Supreme Court said it's okay to use public forum. This is a public forum. You're invited to talk, you talk, you leave, but monuments are more than just a public forum. They are government speech, because to put a monument in a place is speaking for the community, 24, 7, or centuries. And the court highlighted the importance of the government speech and used language like this. Governments have long used monuments to speak to the public, since ancient times, kings, emperors, and other rulers have erected statues of themselves to remind their subjects of their authority and power. Triumphal arches, columns, and other monuments have been built to commemorate military victories and sacrifices and other events of civic importance. And the Supreme Court goes on for a whole page talking about government speeches embodied in monuments. They also said government decision makers, y'all, select monuments that portray what they view as appropriate for the place in question. Taken into account such content-based factors such as aesthetics, history, and local culture, the monuments that are accepted, therefore, are meant to convey and have the effect of conveying a governmental message, and thus constitute government speech. So what does it say about our community? And what does it say to members of our community when we put a monument that celebrates the violent defense of racial human enslavement on our courthouse? Well, what it says to my clients and what they've said to me is that when I have to walk beneath the shadow of a Confederate monument into a building that's supposed to be about equal protection of the law, I'm not going to get the equal protection of the law. I already knew this system wasn't built for me, never has, but they've made it absolutely clear by putting a monument that celebrates the traitorous, violent revolt to defend human slavery. So our monuments should represent what is best about us as a community. They should represent what we all can agree on, and they should not be a point of division. There's division enough. We have many, many places where we can talk about this history. We can put them in museums. We can contextualize them in classrooms. We can put them in cemeteries where they belong, but to put a monument that has the history and represents the violent defense of human enslavement and our courthouse steps is a slap in the face to those people who are descendants of slaves. And because of that, it is very important that you choose voluntarily to remove what remains and have it put in a place that is contextualized so people can understand the history and not put it as an impediment to people going into the courtroom who are trying to get an education who want to enjoy a city park. In that Summon case, there was a concurring opinion where Justice Souter and Justice Ginsburg wrote, for even if the free speech cause neither restricts nor protects government speech, government speakers are bounded by the Constitution's other prescriptions, including those established by the establishment clause and the equal protection clauses. Together with checks imposed by our democratic processes, these constitutional safeguards ensure that the effect of today's decision, allowing the city to prohibit speech, will be limited. And what the court was saying there is that even though there aren't a lot of cases in which government speech is stricken because it's racist, it can happen. We cannot put on our courthouse steps white supremacy forever. We cannot put the N word in our public documents. It seems like, almost a tautology, it seems like, of course we can't. And the reason for that is because our constitution prohibits race discrimination and therefore it also prohibits government speech that celebrates a history of racism. And that's a legal basis for you to consider when deciding what to do with that monument. I'd be glad to take questions if that's a louder one. I don't know what's next. Sure, yes. Thank you very much. Is it okay if I start over here with questions? Can you address statements that have been made or just answer if there is any language in the 13th Amendment about Confederate statues specifically? No, there's nothing in that amendment itself that says anything about statues. The 13th Amendment prohibits slavery and it has an exception for jails where there is still forced labor. There were cases later on that interpreted the 13th Amendment as allowing the federal government to take actions in the states to remove the badges and incidents of slavery. And so it went beyond that amendment and the authority of that amendment went beyond just ending involuntary servitude. It also was an authorizing constitutional provision that enabled the federal government during reconstruction to take actions to remove not only slavery but the badges and incidents of slavery which included the inability to find work, the inability to be treated equally, the inability to hold office and that sort of thing. The 13th Amendment did not get very far with that because those opinions then were later limited and then there hasn't been a lot of 13th Amendment jurisprudence since then. But the 13th Amendment did express a strong, it ended slavery and it expresses a strong constitutional policy against human enslavement on the basis of race. Can you name or tell us, share us the cases where language may have been specific about the 13th Amendment being an authorizing removal of the statues? I can't remember the name of the cases right now but I can give you all the list of the cases that talk about badges and incidents of slavery. Okay, so is that what some commenters are referring to when they say the 13th Amendment specifies but that's not in the actual written amendment? Well, my talk has to do with the 14th Amendment and the 14th Amendment is the one that has the provision about the equal protection of the law and it's the one that prohibits race discrimination. And so in the Supreme Court in the case that I just read said that government speech is limited by the equal protection clause, what that means is government cannot engage in speech that endorses racism under the 14th Amendment. I wanted to ask maybe a little bit of a devil's advocate question. And I wonder if you see any difference between certain kinds of monuments associated with the Confederacy and I mean specifically monuments to individuals say Robert E. Lee or the commander of the Confederate Navy or Jeb Stewart or whoever. And monuments that are erected to individuals from a place Durham County for instance who died because there has been a strong argument made and you may have heard it earlier that this is primarily a monument to dead soldiers. And I just wonder we have all sorts of unpopular wars and we have monuments to those wars, the Vietnam War for example. But that is not considered offensive because it's memorializing the human beings who died rightly or wrongly. I wonder if you see any difference between a monument to Confederate soldiers who are not leaders who did not start the war who may not have participated directly in slavery and monuments like Robert E. Lee or to the leaders of the Confederacy. Do you see any legal difference in the way you would consider these monuments? I think that if I were if and when I litigate this issue of government speech and equal protection that these are kinds of questions that will come up in depositions. These are the kinds of things that we will create a record about in order to decide what what was the meaning of this monument. Then what what do the records show the people said when they were erected and what were they celebrating and I can tell you the record of that was they were celebrating new Jim Crow the Jim Crow laws and white supremacy is what they were celebrating when they were erected. What do they mean now to the whole community. And is this and is this a message that we want to convey as representative of what we believe as a community. And the answer to both of those questions is this is a monument whether it's Robert E. Lee or to dead soldiers that celebrates the violent defense of human enslavement. And there's no comparable war that we fought that is like that. And there's no comparable issue like race that goes back to the beginning of our history that has divided us so there's no issue like race that's bet embedded in our Constitution where human beings were divided into fractions. And because our our country has been so torn by this issue of our Constitution now embodies a principle that it is unacceptable to celebrate racism. And so like unlike any other war we have ever been involved in this is the war that fractured our country killed brothers and sisters on this issue of human slavery. And because it is a horrible tragedy and a blight on our past and because we have not overcome it and because we still wrestle with it to this day. It means to us as people we've got to celebrate inclusion in our public places and teach the history of racism in our museums and our schools. So yes there is a huge difference between a Vietnam Memorial, a deeply unpopular war that we shouldn't have fought and a war that was built around the defense of human enslavement when racism is an important part of our history and we still haven't overcome it. Thank you. I enjoyed your presentation. I have a question you had referenced not the not only the federal Constitution but the state Constitution. You didn't specify and there's no reason for you but I would like you to talk about the which version of the state Constitution referring to when it comes to trees. And if you could talk about the the circumstances surrounding the the actual ratification of that Constitution that state Constitution and speak to us a bit about what it meant to be to include treason as one of the things that was outlawed and what that meant to the people who were ratifying that document. What did treason mean to them? Yeah, so that article one section four and five of our state Constitution was enacted in the reconstruction stat Constitution shortly after the Civil War. And so the purpose of that those two articles of having to do with treason and succession were to show that North Carolina was going to re enter the Union. And it was going to be a part of our our founding document as a state that we would have loyalty to the United States government. Article one section 19, which is the law of the land clause has always had an equal protection clause within it from the beginning when we had our comparable bill of rights. But in 1968, there was another provision, another part of article section 19 that was added after the killing of Martin Luther King in 1968. And that provision says that there'll be no discrimination on the basis of race. And it's that that that provision actually, from my civil rights point of view, gives me a civil rights statute built into our Constitution, which actually I believe makes it easier for me to sue state governments and with a lower burden of proof because of this section of article one section 19 that just says there shall be no race discrimination. So one part of the state constitution that had to do with succession and treason was was enacted shortly after the Civil War, and it was in reaction to the succession of the North Carolina from the Union. Who ratified it, though? The state did. I know, but it was who in the state? The General Assembly and the Senate, by its own terms, the way in which the state has to be, I don't think it was sent to referendum, but I don't know if it was. Were there restrictions on white voters? I don't think there was when that constitution was enacted, no. These were white North Carolinians who had gone ahead and elected members of the General Assembly and the General Assembly decided that they were going to ratify this document stating that the Confederates were treason. Well, we are we are way past my good knowledge of this area. So I want to be very careful about what I say about the history of that treason provision. What I could tell you about it is that North Carolina seceded from the Union and declared themselves an enemy of the United States. They killed over 300,000, were part of a military group that killed over 300,000 people, United States soldiers. As a condition to reenter the Union, Southern states had to adopt constitutions that reflected an end of slavery and a loyalty to the United States government. Exactly how they did that procedurally and who voted and who was allowed to vote at that point. I don't know the details of that. Thank you so much for being with us. One one quick question was the Supreme Court case that you mentioned when was that litigated or when were those decisions. I'm just curious about how mentioned a few more recent justices. Yeah. So the case that I've been relying on is a 2009 case. 2009. That's pleasant growth. That plus that's pleasant growth. Yeah. So the I'm interested in the comparison between the litigation that's been done around what you call the establishment clause around religion and what might be done around this issue of equal protection and race in the cases where the establishment clause was used to change the display of public speech or monuments. What did they have to show that there was damage. Was there. Was there have did they have to show harm of the previous public monuments public displays in order to then make the case that they needed to be taken down. So you've you've you've touched upon a very difficult part of my legal argument right away. Sorry. No, that's good. I appreciate that. The legal under the establishment clause when we're talking about religion. A person to have standing or to be able to bring that suit and say I have a real conflict enough to go to court really doesn't have to show very much. They can show. I'm a taxpayer and I'm offended. And that usually gets them there although increasingly. We're backtracking on that standing requirement, but taxpayers standing and being offended by the government's preference for one religion is enough to get into court. With respect to the equal protection clause, the law is different. And usually more than just being offended is required to bring an equal protection claim. And the real difficulty in bringing the equal protection clause into an analysis limiting government speeches. How much of that other equal protection clause standing infrastructure legal reasoning will have to be used when we're talking about government speech. Is it are we going to litigate it like an establishment clause claim and not require more substantive harm? Or are we going to require more than emotional expressive harm in order to bring a equal protection claim? I think there are good there are good legal arguments that have already been made with respect to Confederate flags that say you have to have more than being offended in order to challenge those Confederate flags. But those cases are distinguishable from monuments and there also have never really taken seriously this idea from Sumam that if government speech is limited by the equal protection clause, then it needs to be limited in a way that's similar to the establishment clause. Therefore someone who is offended by racial speech should have standing and should be able to bring that claim the same way someone who's offended by religious speech does and should not have to show more harm just because it's a race based decision. Right now we are talking in the ether of constitutional law that has not been litigated and has not been brought forth and there are no rulings on these things that would really help us understand what higher courts would do with standing. What I can say is that our state constitution I believe it would be easier to show standing under our state constitution because of this provision that says no race discrimination. And I and the history of that and how it's similar to a Michigan provision shows how that because you treat it more like a civil rights statute, it would be easier to bring an equal protection race discrimination claim under our state constitution. And also because of the supremacy clause or the succession part, anybody who believes that our state actions are conflicting with the federal constitution could have taxpayer standing to bring that claim. So there might be a way to bootleg standing under the state constitution to litigate the federal claim. I think that a lot of recent research about generational trauma and the impact that hundreds of years of racist policy have had on African Americans begins to open up a whole conversation about different ways that we can really point to that people have been harmed. I really appreciate you talking about the power of symbols and the ways that you know the history of the ways that symbols have been used to talk about power and dominance and supremacy. And so, you know, in our thinking that's, you know, I think that it's difficult to think about what kind of space this would open up if we start to really take seriously the harm that has been done using many, many mechanisms and think about what our responsibility is to be reparative there. Yes, I also think in addition to the history of trauma associated with race that could show more of a harm than just expressive harm. The current history of violence around Confederate monuments and the way they become a public nuisance in cities around the country and have led to the killing of a protestor in Charlottesville put those monuments in a different light than they have been before. And the meanings of monuments can change over time and increasingly their focal point for violence. One last thing, and I know this is big and it may be something at some point you think about sharing with us either that could be, you know, an appendix or something you'll report but I heard in Robin's introduction that you also teach restorative justice. And I think that's actually a really interesting avenue for us to consider in terms of any decision that we make or as a community grappling with this symbol and its impact and its legacy in Durham. So if at some point you had some ideas related to techniques that are part of the restorative justice process that you think might be useful to us, we certainly would appreciate those that information. I have a lot of big ideas about that and I would love to share that. I can say that restorative justice techniques have been used in South Africa to overcome a history of racism and to address it head on that there's been a Greensboro commission around the violence that occurred there that employed these techniques of restorative justice. And there was a commission in Wilmington around the 1898 white attack on black businesses that where restorative justice techniques were used by Wilmington. So there's a history internationally and there's also a history within North Carolina for commissions to take these very difficult thorny issues and use them as an opportunity to work on these very difficult issues of race. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. In response to Barbara you seem to make a distinction between Confederate symbols like Confederate flags and Confederate monuments and I wondered if you could comment on the Supreme Court decision that involved Confederate flags or Confederate symbols on license plates. So specifically the walker be the Texas sense of Confederate veterans case if you could talk about because that also concerned government speech and I wonder if you could talk about how that Mike coincide or not coincide with what you're talking about in terms of government speech and the equal protection of the law. Yeah, so the Texas case had to do with a request by a private citizen for the Texas to allow them to put the Confederate symbol on their license tag. And so what the private citizen in that case wanted to do was to compel the government to speak in a certain way and to endorse by this symbol by allowing it to be on a public license plate. And the court said the government has the power to speak how it wants and if the Texas of all states decides it does not want to be racist and does not want to put the Confederate flag on its mind on its tags, then Texas has the right to say no, because the government can control its own speech. There's some tricky space in there though between a private forum where a public forum where private individuals want to speak and government speech that there are places where that can get blurry because if you create a public forum like this for me to come talk then you can't edit my speech but if you create a public forum like a social media site or some other kind of site and you start trying to and if you present it as this is a message from Durham government but it's really private speech then by endorsing that private speech you're making a government speech and so it can get blurry. Well there's a point at which things like license tags which you've got to have and which are can be personalized to some extent and monuments that stand on the courthouse step 24-7 do constitute government speech and the government has the freedom to say no, it had the freedom to say no and assume them that no we don't have to put your monument in our square and in Texas they said we don't have to put your symbol on our license plate it's okay and there's even a North Carolina case where it was okay for the state to endorse a pro-life symbol and the government chose not to allow an equal like a pro-choice symbol and it wasn't considered viewpoint discrimination because the government got to speak how it wanted to speak. That's different than saying when the government speaks it can't speak racism. That's a different situation because no private entities here making you speak as the government you can speak how you want as long as you don't endorse religion and as long as I would say you don't endorse racism that you have a pretty good latitude and what you speak but as the government you can't put white supremacy forever on the front of our courthouse because that violates the equal protection clause. Could you clarify in the Walker case and also in the Pleasant Grove City case whether or not the decisions were that the government can say no or the government must say no? The government can say no. You have the freedom. The government has an incredible amount of freedom to speak and that makes a lot of sense because the government has to speak all the time and the cases systematically in the whole say the real check to government speech is the ballot box that if the people don't like what you're saying that can change at the next election. And so the Supreme Court has indicated it's very unwilling to regulate government speech except in these areas like religion and maybe the equal protection clause. Otherwise government has a lot of freedom in how you speak. Thank you for coming tonight. I'm going to defer my time to the rest of the speakers so we can make sure everybody gets an opportunity to ask some questions. But if you could send us all some to Robin and I will spread it to the committee. Some of the basic info Barbara mentioned about restorative justice so we can kind of take a look at that as we begin to mull over things for the committee. I'd love that. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for coming tonight. I just want to ask are you aware that at West Point secession was taught as a legal form of government before the war between the states. So what are you saying? I said are you aware that the act of secession was still taught as a legal form of. Today at West Point they teach that before the war between the states. But it was still taught in the legal classes at West Point as a legal remedy for what if a state did not like the way the government was acting or anything else. Well you know Thomas Jefferson taught that we should have a revolution every generation. We should throw the whole damn thing out every time a new young group of people came up here. And they taught secession at common sense. Thomas Payne in the federalist papers. We need to throw the whole damn thing out. But because they there were people who thought leaving our nation was a good idea. That's I don't have a problem with that. Leave. You don't like it. But don't leave in order to defend the human enslavement of people of color. Because if if they are enslaved then they need to be free. And if what you're fighting for is to keep humans in chains then that's worth. Well I'm not going to debate that but I would say they had the right to secede. Defend human enslavement. They did not have a right to secede because every human has the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And the South was systematically denying it to eight fifth five eighths of its population. So no they didn't have a right to secede human enslavement. Well I would just add that the Supreme Court ruled in 1869. 1869 after the war. After the war. But there was no Supreme Court decision prior to 1861. No there was not. It was just some West Point idiots who thought. You know that Horace Greeley petitioned the United States government to let Jefferson Davis out of Fort Monroe. Yeah another traitor. He would never win the argument. Jefferson Davis would never win the argument. What which argument did he never win. I said the United States would never win the argument that the South did not have the right to secede. Who was arguing and what was who was the judge and what was the what was. What argument were you talking about. I said the Supreme Court petitioned the United States government to release Jefferson Davis. Okay. Therefore he was released because they didn't want to have the trial and I'll leave it at that. It was one other thing. I do take offense of anybody calling these people treasonous when they had. Well that's exactly what they called them when they seceded and that's exactly what they called them when they called them. People were spies for the Union and spies for the Confederacy that they were killed. A lot of people taking offense to that. Well because it was treason. I mean there's no other word for people who left the United States and killed United States soldiers. There's no other word for that in the Constitution. Our Constitution calls that treason and people were killed and shot for treason during the Civil War. They were, we had our own country. Who had what country? There was a country. What country? The southern country, the Confederate States of America. Yeah that country failed. Yes it did. And it was erected to defend humans enslavement. I'm not going to argue that point. Well good because it seems like you want to dodge it. No. They embrace that because they say heritage is not hate but they never explain what it is. What is it? What did they fight for if it wasn't slavery? They fought for slavery but they fought for other things. What? Like what? They fought for tariffs. They fought for... Tariffs? Yes sir. I'm not going to get into that tonight. Why not? Because I... We're not going to have public comment from the... I'm sorry. That's exactly right. You're exactly right. We're going to have to ask you to leave. We're going to have to ask you to leave. Superceded by the Constitution. I'm sorry. We're going to have to. That's right. You're fine. The time for public comment is over and all of our meetings have been civil and this one will remain so also. Another question. I thought if you could just address the committee members. That would be great. Thank you. So Professor Holmes, thank you so much for your presentation. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the balance of what monuments represent. So I've been thinking a lot about... You raised the case of 1898 in Wilmington and so there are a number of people who participated in that insurrection who went on to other roles in North Carolina governmental history. So when you think about monuments to those figures, to what extent do we weigh the reprehensible or arguably questionable historical actions of those people against other subsequent actions? And so is there a threshold that you would point to in terms of classifying a monument as questionable government speech? That's a great question. And I think it raises another difficulty in limiting any speech. That once you start limiting one kind of speech, there's a real slippery slope to start limiting other kinds of speech. And as someone who does a lot of fighting for people who are trying to speak, it really is a painful thing to think about that slippery slope. And so I welcome your question. A few years ago we were down in Wilmington and I took my kids, two of them, the four who are here, down to McCray Park. And it had been donated to Wilmington by Hugh McCray. And he was one of the participants in the insurrection and wrote the White Declaration of Independence and was responsible for the burning of the black businesses there in Wilmington in 1898. And he deeded that property to Wilmington as a park and put racially restrictive covenants in it so only white children could play at that place. So I show up with my kids. I didn't know which park we were showing up to. And I look and then there's a little monument there that says something like donated by Hugh McCray, gentlemen, philanthropists, brother of ours, something like that. And they left out the park racist, white supremacist, violent, and they did this park with racially restrictive covenants so that it wasn't until the last 50 years that black kids could play here. So I think that there are examples where the racism is immediately and apparently demonstrable in the record. Like the Hugh McCray park, they need to change that sign because the deed to that very park is racist. And to contextualize that gift is important for people to understand that that's a part of Wilmington's history. And the government speech that just celebrates them as a philanthropist is wrong because he also killed black people when he ran them out of Wilmington. I don't know where that line is, and I'm not sure how to think about it because I'm at such a beginning stage of really trying to think about Confederate monuments. The Confederate monuments because of our particular history with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment, I think clearly demonstrate the kind of speech that celebrates that human enslavement that is prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause. I also think if we could point to particular people who are being celebrated who engaged in racist acts and the property in which they're being celebrated itself was conveyed in a racial manner, that that is another good example of something that needs to be changed. But beyond that it's hard to imagine where to draw a bright line and protect us from that slippery slope. To kind of continue on the, to take this Wilmington example, you would argue then that the city of Wilmington needs to remove the monument and rename the park. I'm not sure what the proper remedy is. Let me get to my question because I don't want to argue about Wilmington. But for our example, because of the 2015 state statute, the state is would say that the city of Durham is limited in its ability to choose its speech if it were to choose to speak by taking down the monument. So how do we suss that out? Yes. Well, if I'm right, which there's plenty of reason to doubt that, right? If I'm right that government speech is bounded by the Equal Protection Clause and that this monument constitutes government hate speech, then any statute that would compel that is unconstitutional, that the statute, the law that prohibits this city from deciding its own speech and if the city believes that you're engaging in race speech, the city would have a strong grounds to sue for an injunction against that statute declaring it unconstitutional as applied to this situation because the Durham should have the ability to speak non-racist messages if government so chooses and any law imposed by the General Assembly that restricts municipal speech should be declared unconstitutional. And I guess I should just say it's probably the county, right? Not the city of Durham. Sorry, yes. It's probably say the county just to be clear. Yeah, but the same principles would apply. Yeah. Well, let me also say that there are some, there are also parts of that chapter 100 that kind of limits the government, the local government's ability to move the thing that I think with some creative lawyering could help. There are ways in which you could deal with, if you were really serious about moving that thing, there's ways that the county of the city could do that, comply with that statute to get rid of the statute. And in some cities like in Memphis, they actually conveyed the property that the monument was on to a private property and let them do whatever they wanted to with it. And then that was one way out. There are other, Governor Cooper has even suggested that some of these pose public safety threats and might meet the public safety exception. Also, since that one has been damaged, there's grounds in which to consider that a project and have it removed. So there may be ways in which your county and city attorneys, if they were serious about moving it, could do that at the will of this body without running afoul of that statute. Thank you for your presentation. You really have answered a lot of my questions that I had already. I just was curious to know some of the dissenting opinions from the 2009 case law of Pleasant Grove, if you had it on you. Yeah, let's see. I don't think I have the whole opinion. Actually, there were no dissents. There were lots of concurrences, which makes it difficult to figure out what the holding is sometimes, but there were no dissents. Okay. I will say that the little portion that I read you about the Equal Protection Clause being a limit to government speech came in a concurrence with Justice Souter and Justice Ginsburg. So I'm hanging my hat on a pretty thin legal thread because they were not the majority opinion. They were concurring opinions. So it wasn't a dissent, but it's still pretty weak. Any other questions of our members? I have one follow-up. Do you want to ask a question? When you talk about government speech embodied in these monuments, and this may not be a legal question. This is more as a citizen of Durham question, does say, if we take as a given that the Confederate monument base that remains on the county property constitutes racist speech, is what I understand your argument to be. If the county and city choose to add around the monument non-racist speech, does that change? Do you feel the racist content of the base does adding speech materially shift that question? Or does that base, in your opinion, remain racist? Well, what's coming to me is that my grandfather said when you put shit in ice cream, you still got shit in ice cream. And that's what that feels like to me. The problem is that there are people in Durham who want to go to the courthouse to get equal protection of the law. That there are people who want to believe that there is no racism in the people who are going to decide about their fate and their deeds. And those people have to walk by there to get into that old courthouse. So, you know, maybe if you moved it somewhere else and contextualize it and gave the history of it and made it a history lesson. So that people who are suffering, who are in disputes, who are trying to get deeds to their property, who are trying to figure out they got a criminal record, did not have to walk beneath the shadow of a confederate soldier to do that. Stephanie? Yes. You mentioned earlier when you said that you mentioned being on the record that the Durham monument was erected to celebrate white supremacy in Jim Crow. What documentation or sources are you referring to? Well, so there's a long history. The daughters of the Confederacy who moved and helped pay for and raise money for that monument, they were on a statewide campaign to erect monuments across the state. At that time? At that time. They helped raise the Silent Sam monument on the campus of Chapel Hill at that time. They also in Concord, North Carolina erected a memorial and a monument to the KKK at that time. They were engaging by their own terms in an attempt to shift the narrative around the Civil War from a narrative that it was about defending slavery to what they called the lost cause narrative in which they were defending a kind of old Southern culture that embraced states' rights and that this really wasn't about slavery. And that actually became the way in which history was taught for decades after they were part of that changing of our history. And so one of the people who moved for the county to raise our monument was Julian Carr. The Durham newspapers at the time that talked about the building of the monument and the raising of the monument did it. And Julian Carr was the mover and shaker around that. He was the person who was making a lot of money here along with Mr. Dew doing tobacco and also textile mills. The town of Carborough was named after him and we have a number of the folks at Duke are trying to change their history building to change their name so it's not Carr because there was actually a white supremacy award that they had and his face was on it because he was such a good one. I believe it was the state of North Carolina had a white supremacy award. It was either that or a local Durham award. I have a copy of that medallion with Julian Carr's face on it and I can't remember if it's a state award but it says white supremacy on it. He bragged in his speech he was at the speech for the Silent Sam when it was put up and during that he said things like in bringing up this monument we are celebrating the purity of the Anglo-Saxon race. He also bragged about beating a black woman. He also signed his name general and people referred to him as general even though he was never a general in the Confederate Army so he lied about his reign. But it didn't bother folks because he was so rich and he was donating a lot of money to a lot of people at that time and celebrating the success of the white supremacist at that time and enacting Jim Crow laws that segregated the races. Historians generally agree that the monuments that were erected during that period of time after 1898 before 1920 that period of time they were erecting these monuments to celebrate the separation of the races and the success of white supremacy as a political doctrine to exclude people from the ballot box to exclude them from owning homes, from excluding them, from going to the same bathrooms and that sort of thing. That was the purpose of the Confederate monuments not to celebrate the death of some poor soldier. And would you, I guess I can ask you this from a legal angle, do you think that there is an argument to make in front of a court that white supremacy, the belief of white supremacy is a religion based on current? Oh, that's an interesting question. I feel like I'm back in law school so hypothetically. I would say that it's a religion. Well, I think the way the courts and the Supreme Court defines religion, I do not believe it meets the legal definition of religion. I think it's a pernicious ideology that has killed a lot of people in our history. It is something that we also individually have to work on our own racism, having been raised in a culture in which there is still systemic and implicit bias. We have not overcome our history of that. And there are people who practice white supremacy like you would think is a religion in terms of rituals and symbols and the KKK certainly mixed Christian symbols with their terror on black people when they were burning crosses. But I don't think that white supremacy itself is a religion. I just wanted to ask another question. I think it's really interesting that it's many lawyers have been taking up sort of the litigating the impacts of white supremacy or oppression of African Americans and really trying to begin to think about what the country community owes them in reparation as a way. It's similar to the what's happening in Alabama where the lynching Memorial where we're, you know, the acknowledgement of what's happened and the acknowledgement of the people that have been harmed by that. So I'm wondering if there are things that that folks use in legal cases to document the trauma of the harm, you know, we understand certainly in lynching people lost their lives. But I think as we think about the gradations of that and we think about as you suggest people walking by a symbol that is meant to intimidate meant to announce that they don't have the power and the equal rights they deserve. I'm wondering if there are ways that lawyers have used what have they used to document and show cause of that kind of harm that that you know might be germane to what we're thinking about. Well, the thing that comes to mind is the Brown versus Board of Education litigation, which Thurgood Marshall and Hamilton Hughes and those folks as part of their litigation strategy, they had and found many social studies on children and people of color on how the stigmatic harm of going being excluded from schools impacted children. And so there was social science that they employed to show how the internalized racism harmed people of color. I feel like I'm preaching to the choir right here to McKessick Melton's didn't hear right before me. So I won't say much more beyond that civil rights lawyers. The geniuses who started the civil rights movement understood that in order to be successful in civil rights movements, it is important to be able to document and articulate and quantify and show how systemic racism impacts people in their bodies and souls. Thank you. Any other members have any. I just wanted to one point on general car. You know, he didn't lie about his rank that was conferred on him by the confederate veterans when he was commander of the organization. I will say he took it a little bit far. It was conferred on him by the veterans. Yeah, well, I have a very poor opinion of him. Any other comments and questions by the committee. We have about 10 minutes left if we need that. We have upon occasion let the audience ask a question if they liked I just don't want us to get unruly again. And I'd like to say to the gentleman who was talking about the Declaration of Independence that, you know, his point is mine exactly that there is this right to revolt when the that that's built into our system of government that if you don't like it, leave. So we do have a little bit of time if there's a question from the audience for Dr. Holmes. No, Scott Holmes. I'm not a doctor. There's a question from the audience for Scott. So I don't know. So, I mean, I know more about the reasons articulated by the people who started the American Revolution as to why they felt justified in revolting and leaving the British Empire. And the things that they pointed to were contract theories under John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, and a number of people that they pointed to that showed that government was really built upon the consent of the governed. And that at some point if the government becomes so authoritarian and so oppressive that the individuals lack basic liberties, then those individuals have the right to revolt and institute their own government. And that's that language is pretty well articulated in the Declaration of Independence that we just heard passionately articulated. I don't know the legalities of the debate that occurred at the time of secession that whether or not this was a legal secession or not a legal secession. I think it would be hard to make those arguments in the context of people leaving a country because the basic idea of rule of law would no longer apply if the people who are leaving are rejecting the authority of the people they're leaving. So my general thought about that is that if you don't like it here and you don't feel like you want to be part of an inclusive community, and you don't want to be a part of a place where what we celebrate is human diversity. And we don't want to respect and you don't want to respect the feelings of people of color who are traumatized by these public monuments, then go start your own country. Do we have any other questions, comments? Yes ma'am, if you could, if you have a comment or question, then I will repeat it because they need it for the broadcast. So if I could just repeat that for the for television viewers that that the right to secede and correct me if I'm wrong applies more logically to people who are enslaved to protest that enslavement. And it's your argument that it doesn't necessarily apply as as well to people who are succeeding in order to keep others enslaved. Is that correct? You want to comment on this? I don't I think secession really has to do more with states than it does individual liberties, but that's a nuance that really doesn't matter. I think your point is exactly right. If anybody had a right to revolt in the South, it was the people who were enslaved and not the white plantation owners who were benefiting from their labor. Great, well thanks everyone so much and thank you Scott for coming to a very interesting presentation very helpful I think for us. This is our last formal meeting with public comment. So I want to thank everyone both who's here tonight who's come to our meetings and who's listening via the city cable channel for coming and sharing your views with us. We are going to start meeting as a committee now to decide on what our recommendations will be to the city and the county. And we will definitely keep people informed about that. So if you haven't already, we have a sign up sheet out by the snacks, please take snacks. And please leave us your name and yeah kids hit snacks their rice crispy treats. Please leave us your name and any contact information so that we can let you know about what our deliberations are in the end. But thank you so much. And one last thing that are still all our social media is up and running so if you still have any additional comments not only the people that are here but anybody out there in the public. And she'd like to make any comments to us please feel free to do so on thank the committee. Thank the public since it's our last public meeting and good night. Yeah, thank you.