Our need for monuments to the struggle for freedom
BY REGINALD HODGES
AUGUST 22, 2015
My ancestors have been in North Carolina since before the Civil War. My ancestors contributed immensely to the greatness of this state. They helped to build the economy through the production and processing of tar, cotton, tobacco, rice and more. They survived slavery, the Jim Crow era and the white supremacy campaign, sharecropping, voter suppression, segregation, the KKK and the civil rights period ...
North Carolina has over 100 Civil War and Confederacy-related statues, many on Capitol grounds, honoring Confederate leaders and those who fought against and denied freedom for many in North Carolina. The individuals honored through these statues were on the wrong side of history. Only a handful of monuments honor North Carolina residents who struggled, in their own ways, for freedom. These North Carolina residents numbered in the hundreds of thousands, some resisted, some fought, some escaped and some sabotaged a racist system. A few were lynched, while others went to their graves beaten by an unjust system. There is no monument to their struggles for freedom on the Capitol grounds in Raleigh ...
My grandfather told my father that if he studied, worked hard and followed rules, he could do great things. My grandfather was being honest. He did not say to my father that he could do anything. My father knew he could not go into a public restroom, sit on the main floor of a movie theater, sit down and have a drink at Woolworths or sit in the front of a bus. My father did not have equal access to opportunities. My father, one generation removed from slavery, continued the struggle for freedom. My father defined freedom as being able to vote and to have access to higher education ...
While my father was college-educated and worked at a university, he could not pass the literacy test and was unable to vote until he was in his 40s ...
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