Vance Monument Removal
Asheville’s most prominent monument, an obelisk honoring Confederate-era governor Zebulon Vance, is being removed.
During the 2020 George Floyd protests, the monument was defaced with spray paint. In June 2020, the Asheville City Council voted for a resolution that included having a task force determine if the monument should be removed or re-purposed.
The Vance Monument Task Force comprised 12 community residents, with six appointments each by the County and City. Over the course of roughly 12 weeks, the group held virtual meetings and several online public input sessions to help them arrive at their recommendation to remove Vance Monument.
Buncombe County Chairman Brownie Newman said he was impressed by the collaboration and compromise members of the task force exhibited. “Not everyone that started this process had the same perspective… folks appointed to the task force represented all views.”
Task force co-chair Oralene Simmons said as a Black woman, the marker has always felt ominous. “If this monument is left in its original form, rather than completely removed or its materials altered beyond recognition, it will continue to serve as a symbol of white supremacy to those most affected by its presence,” she said at a Nov. 12, 2020 meeting.
City Council member Keith Young, who is African American, said he believed that those who erected the monument were saying to black people, “We still have power. We still have control.” N.C. Senator Jim Davis said he believed history needed to be preserved and that trying to rewrite history and remove monuments would not “alleviate the fact that slavery was.”
On July 8, 2020, workers began the process of covering the monument “in order to reduce its impact on the community and to reduce the risk of harm it presents in its current state.” On March 23, 2021, the city council voted 6-1 to remove the monument.
A Buncombe County native and North Carolina governor during the Civil War, Vance also served as a U.S. senator and a Confederate officer. He was a slave owner, opposed rights for Black Americans during Reconstruction, and firmly believed that Blacks’ place was in servitude. Historian Sasha Mitchell believes Vance was grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. The monument is located on a site where slaves are believed to have been sold.
Monument removal and demolition, as well as temporary site restoration, is expected to take 45 days. After the monument is removed, a team of planners and community organizers will work with the public to create a comprehensive Community Vision Document for the site.
Also see:
- Task Force Decision: Remove Vance Monument
- Buncombe County Commissioners Accept Vance Monument Recommendation
- Monuments of Injustice (Asheville Blade)
