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For nearly 100 years, a monument to Confederate veterans stood in Enfield, a small town north of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. That is, until newly elected Mayor Mondale Robinson had something to say – and more importantly – do about it.
Earlier in August, the town commission voted to remove it 4 -1 in an area where Black folks make up about 85% of the total population. Then, Robinson volunteered to do it himself, stating it wouldn’t cost the town a single penny. And he meant every single word.
While going live on Facebook, he proudly filmed the toppling of a Confederate monument and celebrated its long overdue destruction unabashedly.
Since then, the State Bureau of Investigation said it is looking into the destruction of the monument in the town park.
“The park is less than a block away from my house so every time I leave my house and look to the right, I’m forced to see this Confederate monument,” Robinson told Atlanta Black Star.
Robinson, 43, states he does not know why his own town’s police chief asked for the North Carolina Bureau of State Investigations to investigate his hands-on approach to removing a 94-year-old Confederate monument. Yet, either way, Robinson states, “it’s been there since 1928 and it’ll never see another Monday or Tuesday in Enfield, North Carolina as a monument.”
As racist whites are known to do, they’ve since mobilized to distribute propaganda flyers around the town.
Predictably, Robinson has also been the target of racist hate mail.
In an interview with The Daily Herald, Robinson said an entire black neighborhood’s yards were littered with 50 -75 similar messages. He said several people called the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office about the incident, and deputies collected the evidence.
“That’s what’s going on right now. So people continue to tell and say it’s not about, you know, racism,” Robinson said about the incident. “This is a form of terror. And it’s not because they’re trying to recruit white people. They can’t say that because the number is not a real number. The website is not a real website. So that means they’re only throwing these in Black people’s yards trying to intimidate them.”
When asked what he felt may have instigated the flyer incident, Robinson responded, “Four hundred years of white supremacy — white nationalism on the wise. I mean, there are tons of factors that instigated this. But to be clear, an uppity Negro has always been a problem for the white status quo. So the fact that I don’t bow down to the idea that white people are more than Black people or white people deserves equity that Black folk don’t get to taste, frightens the status quo.”
A town where 85% of the population and taxpayers votes to remove a racist statue glorifying the suppression of black people. The town’s Chief of Police whose entire salary is paid by black people who want the statue removed, reports the act to the State Bureau of Investigation. A bureau whose primary role for 150 years has been to enforce slavery and then Jim Crow oppression. Enforcing laws, for example, where any white person could strike any black person if they dared stay on the sidewalk as a white person approaches. The horrid history of law enforcement in the South continues to this day. I know Supreme court justice Antonin Scalia declared that racism is over from his isolated ivory tower. What a joke this Supreme Court is. Racism is alive and destructive all over America today and getting stronger not disappearing. What is disappearing are the laws protecting its citizens of color at the hands of the legal system that has always enforced Jim Crow laws that tear away any self respect a person of color can muster. This town’s Chief of Police MUST be fired by the City Council. Do not be afraid!