Confederate Memorial

Wilmington, Italy

The Confederate Memorial was erected in 1924 by the estate of veteran Gabriel James Boney, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and a Confederate veterans association in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina. In August 2021, the City of Wilmington removed it from public land and stored it, awaitin

g the UDC chapter to take possession. The memorial is a 40-foot, 11-ton stele of white granite and a granite pedestal. Upon the pedestal was placed a bronze sculpture of two soldiers. One soldier, standing with a rifle, protects a wounded soldier holding a broken sword. It was sited on the median of a busy street near Wilmington's downtown nightlife district. The memorial has a history of being struck by vehicles and as a target for vandals. Motor vehicles have so damaged the memorial that its granite stele and pedestal have been completely replaced with new stone twice—in 1954 and in 1999. On the pedestal is an inscription in verse. The lines are a rewriting in Confederate terms of an unrelated Canadian poem from the 1870s, "'Tis Christmas". In 2020, the memorial became a flashpoint of demonstrations against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd. In the early morning hours...

Listen to the audio guide for Confederate Memorial Free on WIP — starts by itself when you arrive, even with the screen off