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Jackson commissioners shelve task force, discuss statue’s fate BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER fter a week of impassioned public discussion and protest over the fate of the Confederate soldier standing on the courthouse steps in Sylva, Jackson County Commissioners discussed the issue during a regularly scheduled work session Tuesday, July 14. “Commissioner (Gayle) Woody had started this discussion by asking that we consider maybe putting together a task force, and that was why we put this on the agenda, to come back today and debate the merit of that and determine if we want to do that,” said Chairman Brian McMahan. On Saturday, July 11, nearly 300 people showed up downtown to attend opposing demonstrations — one calling for the statue’s removal, and the other demanding that the monument stay where it is. Erected in September 1915, the statue depicts an unnamed Confederate infantryman standing upon a pedestal featuring a Confederate flag and a plaque that reads, “To our valiant fathers: champions of reconciliation with justice, of union with manhood, of peace with honor; they fought with faithfulness, labored with cheerfulness, and suffered in silence. To
July 22-28, 2020
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our heroic mothers: Spartan in devotion, Teuton in sacrifice, in patience superior to either and in modesty and grace matchless among womankind.” Supporters of the statue say that it’s an important piece of local history, and that while the Civil War affected the lives of nearly every resident of Jackson County at the time, very few owned slaves. To those soldiers, the war was about defending their homeland from invaders, not about slavery or even racism. Likewise, they say, the statue itself is not about racism. Opponents, meanwhile, say that the statue represents only the part of local history written by a white society that has for too long controlled the narrative. Jackson County may not have been a plantation community, but slavery still existed there, and the subjugation of Black people was a cornerstone of the short-lived Confederacy.
COMMISSIONERS DROP TASK FORCE IDEA Those opponents also decried Woody’s task force idea, which she originally floated during a June 16 work session, as a dangerous
Petition calls for statue to stay During a work session Tuesday, July 14, Commissioner Gayle Woody presented commissioners with a petition that community members gave her calling for the Confederate statue on the courthouse steps to stay. The signatures were delivered in a spiral notebook labeled “Keep Statue Petition” and included four pages totaling 101 names. proposition that would turn marginalized people into targets and allow commissioners to shirk their responsibility as leaders. During the July 14 meeting, Woody said that she made the suggestion out of recognition that “we are five white individuals and that our county is more diverse than that,” hoping that by bringing people of different backgrounds together “we could hopefully come to some common ground where we could move forward respectfully.” She added that it was never her intention to abdicate the board’s role as the decision-making body, but
rather to receive information and perspective from a more diverse group before making that decision. “In answer to your question, I want to defer to the board what you all think,” she said. “I have some dear friends in this community that I wanted to suggest to be on that task force. I would never want to put them in the situation where they would be attacked and treated disrespectfully, so I’m kind of rethinking, and I want to defer to my fellow commissioners to have your input on if you think that would be a positive thing, or would it be more divisive.” Commissioner Boyce Deitz said he thought a task force could yield positive results but that the current atmosphere might be too charged for such an effort to work. “If it’s done correctly — I don’t know what that would be — it may be good, but I think there’s so many possibilities and it opens so many doors to bad relationships between people,” he said. “I’ve asked people, ‘Would you serve?’ They say, ‘I ain’t serving on it.’” Woody said that, no matter what happens, she wants to see the community focus on unity as it navigates this issue. “We have so many wonderful people here in Jackson County, and I’m hearing from them daily, on both sides of this issue, and I want people to know that,” she said. “Like Commissioner Deitz said, you’re stigmatizing people because they’re ‘them’ on the other side. Whatever side they’re on, we need to be talking about ‘us.’ We are the citizens of Jackson County. We are ‘us.’”
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