In the context of Vance Monument, explore the Legal issues of the Removal.
In June 2020, the Asheville City Council explored the possibility of removing the Vance Monument. One obstacle was the 2015 North Carolina Statute 100–2.1 that allows privately owned monuments to be moved but stated that monuments on public land could not be moved unless they were relocated to a "site of similar prominence". State Senator Jim Davis, primary sponsor of the 2015 law prohibiting removal of Civil War–era monuments, said he believed history needed to be preserved and that trying to rewrite history and remove monuments would not change the fact that slavery existed. However, Davis acknowledged that there were some exceptions to the statute and that the only recourse when violated was through the courts.City attorney Brad Branham said it was not clear who owned the Vance Monument and additional research was needed. He said, "Records from the time of its erection are often unclear or unavailable." Part of the state law also required a review by the North Carolina Historical Commission. However, Branham said that only applied to state-owned monuments.At first, some thought that the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) owned the Vance Monument, but not the land it was on. Then, it was determined that the UDC had just placed a plaque and a free-standing stone by the monument. However, Sara N. Powell, president of the North Carolina Division of the UDC, said the additions to Vance Monument—a plaque and free-standing stone—were "gifts and protected by state law". However, the city continued its efforts to determine if the monument was private property. Attorney Kirk Lyons of the Southern Legal Resource Center said, "They will probably have a very hard time proving that because, you know, things were done on a handshake a hundred years ago."By March 2021, the city claimed it could remove the monument despite the state statute as the monument was a "public safety hazard because of numerous incidents of vandalism and threats to destroy it". The Charlotte Observer reported that the monument would be destroyed, rather than being stored or relocated.
United Daughters of the Confederacy Civil War Southern Legal Resource Center The Charlotte Observer Confederacy State Senator South Jim Davis Asheville Daughters of the Confederacy