Thursday, March 28, 2024

Podcast June 13 – Wilmington’s confederate monuments, Hugh MacRae Park, court delays [Free]

On this episode, we tackle two painful legacies of Wilmington’s past — the two Confederate monuments in the heart of downtown, and the New Hanover County park named for Hugh MacRae, a white supremacist who helped organize the 1898 massacre, a terror campaign launched against the city’s thriving black community.

We take a hard look at what the options are for dealing with these issues, and the arguments for ‘preserving the past’ versus removing names and monuments that are clearly painful to the modern-day residents. Just as importantly, we look at the apathetic response from local elected officials to these issues — including the oft-recited claims that a 2015 state law prevents anything from being done about the monuments on the local level (a claim that is not true, as other cities and town have shown).

Also on this episode, Covid-19 has slowed the courts across the country down to a crawl. Locally, that means we’ll all be waiting for the resolution to a host of cases, including former NHCSO deputy Jordan Kita, accused of trespassing into the household of Dameon and Monica Shepard. It also includes four alleged gunmen seen at the Wilmington protest on May 31 — some of whom have denied charges that they were armed. Cases of interest from before Covid-19 are being delayed as well, including former Roland Grise band teacher Peter Michael Frank and Wilmington dentist Michael Lee Hasson — both charged with sexual misconduct and assault.

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