Confederate statue is bulldozed as mayor livestreams it, video shows. ‘Not in my town’

A North Carolina town watched live online as a bulldozer pushed down its Confederate monument.

Mondale Robinson, the mayor of Enfield, North Carolina, took to Facebook to share a livestream as a Confederate monument in the town’s Randolph Park was demolished by a bulldozer on Sunday, Aug. 21.

“Yes, sirs! Death to the Confederacy around here,” Robinson said in the video as a bulldozer knocked the monument over. “Not in my town. Not on my watch.”

Enfield, North Carolina, is a town of about 2,300 situated about 70 miles northeast of Raleigh. The town’s board of commissioners voted 4-1 to remove the statue at an Aug. 15 meeting, according to The Daily Herald.

“We voted for it to be gone. It’s gone,” Robinson said in a separate livestream. “It’s just a dead statue to a dead idea: the Confederacy. ... What once was can now be more space for people to do yoga, workout, or anything else except for come here and worship the Confederate flag or the Confederacy.”

The Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1928, according to a University of North Carolina Chapel Hill database. The 10-foot-tall marble statue bears a Confederate flag carved into the marble of its center column and was initially built as a memorial to Confederate and World War I soldiers.

Over the years, various inscriptions have been added to the statue, including dedications in memory of veterans who fought in World War II, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War, the database says.

Despite its various inscriptions, the monument’s initial purpose was to honor Confederate soldiers, which Enfield does not support, Robinson said.

“It is not a monument for all veterans. It was put up here in 1928,” Robinson said. “None of those wars had been fought when that statue was put up. That statue was built for the Confederate. That’s why it was engraved on the front of it. There’s not a plaque attached to it about the Confederacy. The main purpose was to honor the soldiers who fought on the side of slavery.”

The demolition of Enfield’s statue is the latest in a series of Confederate statues or namesakes that have been removed or destroyed around the state and nationwide.

Earlier this year, a committee of volunteers suggested that North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, which is named after Confederate soldier Gen. Braxton Bragg, be renamed to Fort Liberty.

And in June, the Country Music Association banned Confederate flags from its CMA Fest, joining a growing list of other similar events that have banned the flag and related imagery.

The remnants of the statue were roped off with police tape as of Monday morning to prevent anyone from taking leftover pieces of the monument, Robinson said in another post.

“The only flag flying in this park is the United States of America’s flag. If that’s too hard for you to swallow, then you too are living in a time that is the wrong side of history. You, too, do not respect Black lives. But in this town, in this town, we do. We do,” Robinson said.

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