Amid the rolling farmland of central North Carolina, in the small town of Denton, three nearly identical Confederate statues stand on a 1.5-acre patch of manicured grass.
All three statues depict unnamed soldiers — men with mustaches, clutching rifles, atop pedestals affixed to sturdy concrete bases. And all three previously stood in communities around the state, until social justice protests swept the country in recent years, and demonstrators demanded the statues’ removal because they saw them as memorializing historical racism.
Now they stand in a private park, Valor Memorial, that is dedicated to resurrecting Confederate statues that municipalities removed from public view.
One of the park’s creators, Toni London, said she believed that Confederate soldiers deserved the same honor as any other veterans.
“It’s been an obsession to make it succeed, to make it better,” Ms. London, 52, said of the park, “and to save more.”
But others — including officials in communities where Confederate statues have stood — have long seen the memorials as relics that inappropriately revel in the country’s racist past.
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The post In a Private Park in North Carolina, Confederate Statues Are Rising Again appeared first on New York Times.
