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Lexington May Ask County To Move Confederate Statue Outside Of City

Protesters gather on the square in Uptown Lexington where the city's Confederate monument stands on Saturday, June 27. PAUL GARBER/WFDD

The City of Lexington is scheduled to discuss a letter to Davidson County Commissioners asking them to remove the Confederate Monument that stands on a Main Street square.

The letter from Mayor Newell Clark says the statue is incompatible with the city's commitment to have a welcoming environment for all people.

There's also a concern that it creates an unsafe situation. 

Dymond Robinson is part of a group that has been demonstrating against Lexington's monument for more than two weeks. She says she's heard racial taunts during that time and some people have knocked down anti-racist signs placed on the statue's base.

“Ever since we've been protesting this statue it's brought out the worst in people and that's just more of a reason for it to be gone,” she says.

Many supporters of the statue have chimed in on the city's Facebook page, saying the monument is harmless and should be left standing.

The statue was first erected in 1905.

The letter requests that the county move the statue outside of Lexington's city limits. The city council is scheduled to take up the measure at its July 13 meeting. 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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