Post by Logan on Mar 2, 2016 5:38:29 GMT -6
Chapel Hill removes cemetery monument to slaves and free people of color
CHAPEL HILL -- Town leaders asked workers Monday to remove the granite marker installed Feb. 4 to honor 361 slaves and free people of color buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
Only a small, rectangular patch of dirt remained at the site by nightfall.
“The marker idea is a fabulous idea to do something there to commemorate and honor those people that are buried there,” Mayor Pam Hemminger said. “The wording was seen as offensive to some, and it didn’t go through a community process to describe what we should do there.”
Retired Judge Stanley Peele had proposed the marker’s inscription, using the words on the back of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery as a model:
“Here rest in honored glory 361 American persons of color known but to God.”
Read more here: www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/chapel-hill-news/article63211447.html
CHAPEL HILL -- Town leaders asked workers Monday to remove the granite marker installed Feb. 4 to honor 361 slaves and free people of color buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
Only a small, rectangular patch of dirt remained at the site by nightfall.
“The marker idea is a fabulous idea to do something there to commemorate and honor those people that are buried there,” Mayor Pam Hemminger said. “The wording was seen as offensive to some, and it didn’t go through a community process to describe what we should do there.”
Retired Judge Stanley Peele had proposed the marker’s inscription, using the words on the back of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery as a model:
“Here rest in honored glory 361 American persons of color known but to God.”
Read more here: www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/chapel-hill-news/article63211447.html