The Confederate Monument outside the historic Iredell County Courthouse.
The Iredell County Commissioners voted to remove the monument in March, but then reconsidered, prompting the lawsuit.
“A glorified symbol of White Supremacy stands guard over the Iredell County Government Center, a place where the government is supposed to serve all of Iredell County’s residents,” said Rev. Curtis Johnson, President of the South Iredell NAACP, in a statement on the suit Tuesday. “That is totally unacceptable, as the Commissioners recognized in their March Resolution. The Monument must go . . . peacefully, but it must go. The time is long overdue.”
Plaintiffs in the suit include the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the NAACP’s Statesville and South Iredell Branches and the Iredell Clergy for Healing and Justice, an alliance of Iredell County religious leaders. The suit argues that the statue threatens public safety and is in violation of the North Carolina const