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Third And Final Confederate Monument To Leave Asheville’s Pack Square

A light brown, sand colored monument in front of a brown building. The monument is made up of bricks, the bricks are stacked ontop of each other, narrowing as it goes upwards
Billy Hathorn // CC
The Vance Monument in Asheville's Pack Square in 2012. The Asheville city council voted Tuesday to accept a task force recommendation to remove the monument from the square.

The Asheville City Council voted to remove the third and final Confederate monument from Asheville’s Pack Square Tuesday night. The 65-foot Vance Monument commemorates Zebulon Vance, North Carolina’s governor during the Civil War and U.S. Senator during Reconstruction who opposed civil rights for Black people.

The Buncombe County Commissioners also voted to remove the monument Monday, following a recommendation for removal from a task force created by the city council and the county commissioners. The task force was created in June to decide whether to remove and relocate the obelisk or leave it in place and recontextualize it. During the summer, the city removed a plaque bearing Robert E. Lee’s likeness in Pack Square and a memorial to Confederate soldiers outside the Buncombe County courthouse. Blue Ridge Public Radio’s news director Matt Bush joins host Anita Rao to talk about the history of the monument and next steps for removing it.

Kaia Findlay is the lead producer of Embodied, WUNC's weekly podcast and radio show about sex, relationships and health. Kaia first joined the WUNC team in 2020 as a producer for The State of Things.
Anita Rao is an award-winning journalist, host, creator, and executive editor of "Embodied," a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships & health.
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