Upcoming symposium to focus on the continual harm inflicted by Confederate monuments

“Confederate monuments are not simply relics to the past, slightly embarrassing for those of us who understand their intention. Their presence continues to cause mental anguish, create fear, and perpetuate racial injustice. All of us must own this truth and work for restitution by removing these monuments,” Rev. Dr. Jennifer Copeland, executive director North Carolina Council of Churches and a member of the Symposium Planning Committee, said in a statement.

The Conference, titled “Undue Harm: Undoing the Legacy of Confederate Monuments,” will focus on the harms these monuments inflict on Black Americans every day, eschewing the traditional, mainstream conversations on the history of those symbols and the intent of those who erected them, in favor of a multi-disciplinary perspective on the myriad of ways they continue to inflict pain and suffering in the present day.

Speakers include Bree Newsome Bass, a writer, filmmaker and public speaker who removed a Confederate flag from the South Carolina Capitol after a white supremacist killed nine Black Americans at a church Bible study in 2015; W. Fitzhugh Brundage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of history at the University of North Carolina; Benson Cooke, a professor of counseling and psychology at the University of the District of Columbia; and Stuart Higdon, a public defender in Gaston County.

For more on the recent movement to remove Confederate monuments across North Carolina, see this Monday Numbers from 2020.