He stoked a racist and bloody massacre. A former NC Rep thinks his statue should say so.
A former North Carolina representative wants historical context about a racist government coup to be added to the Josephus Daniels statue in downtown Raleigh.
Former state Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam has asked the Raleigh City Council to add language to the Daniels statue, which sits in Nash Square across from the former offices of The News & Observer. Daniels, who died in 1948, was a publisher and editor of the paper. His family owned The N&O until McClatchy bought it in 1995.
The statue’s existing plaque, which outlines Daniels’ civic, government and education accomplishments, is accurate, Stam said during a recent Raleigh City Council meeting.
“But that’s only half the story,” he said.
“He was one of two people who instigated a murderous, bloody coup d’état in Wilmington in 1898,” Stam said. “I have seen estimates of 40, 50, 60 people murdered as a result of it, resulting in the violent overthrow of the elected government of Wilmington.”
The property is owned by the state but is maintained by the city of Raleigh. Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin asked for the city manager to bring a report back about what the council, if anything, can do.
Stam, a Republican, represented Wake County from 2003 to 2017 in the General Assembly. In 2007, he voted against a bill to acknowledge the massacre was “a conspiracy of a white elite that used intimidation and force to replace a duly elected local government.”
The Wilmington Massacre
Stam said he had vaguely known about the Wilmington Massacre, but said he read “Wilmington’s Lie,” a recent book that describes the role Daniels and others played in it.
The elected government leaders and business leaders of Wilmington in 1898 were black. Daniels conspired with political leader Furnifold Simmons and former Confederate Army officer Alfred Moore to convince white residents that the black residents could steal their jobs and were a threat to their safety, The N&O reported. This was done through racist speeches, pamphlets and newspaper editorials and cartoons. (The N&O apologized for its role in the massacre in 2006.)
Dozens of black residents were killed, a black-owned newspaper was set on fire and several thousand residents were forced to leave their town and hide.
“It was the exile for many African Americans and the solidification of Jim Crow,” Stam said. “It is time for Raleigh to set the stage right at Nash Square.”
The statue shouldn’t come down or the inscription be changed, but a plaque could be added next to the statue for historical context, he said.
Confederate statues
North Carolina has wrestled with its historic statues, monuments and symbols that many say honor racist leaders and racist causes.
In 2015, the Republican-controlled General Assembly approved a law that banned removing “objects of remembrance” from public property. Stam voted in favor of that law.
Confederate statues in downtown Durham and on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus have been torn down, resulting in ongoing protests, counterprotests and legal sagas. While other local governments have declared the monuments to be nuisances and voted to remove them, including in Chatham County.
And courtrooms have removed former racist, slave-owning judges portraits.
This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 2:58 PM with the headline "He stoked a racist and bloody massacre. A former NC Rep thinks his statue should say so.."
