This story was produced by The News & Observer in partnership with the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.
One afternoon in mid-July, hundreds of people gathered around a stage in front of the historic gray stone courthouse at the heart of the small town of Graham, North Carolina. They were listening to a song of protest.
“We don’t want to die,” a local musician sang out to the diverse crowd.
The group wanted the removal of a marble statue of a Confederate soldier that had stood watch over the town square since white citizens of Alamance County erected it in 1914. But protesters in this central North Carolina county seat were seeking much more.
1 guilty, charges dismissed for 2 others after Commissioner meeting arrests
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As protestors and counter-protestors prepare for an upcoming Confederate memorial in Graham, organizers for both sides sound off on their respective motivations.
On Thursday, parts of Graham s Court Square will become a venue for a Confederate memorial, said Thomas May, the event s primary organizer as noted on documents submitted to the Alamance County Sheriff s Office. Everybody s been asking me to do a Confederate event, May said on Tuesday, but I didn t want to do one just to be doing one.
May said he knows of the controversy surrounding Alamance County s Confederate monument, which is also located at Court Square. He said he wanted to wait for his event to have some sort of historical significance, which is why the memorial is scheduled for Thursday.
$1.5 million: revenue on once cent of property tax
3%: increase in county tax base
7.04 cents: Amount of property tax dedicated to education capital spending, paying down bond debt and directly funding projects generating $8.6 million for the Alamance-Burlington School System and $2.1 million for Alamance Community College
3.6 cents: dedicated to the “debt step down” program, $2.6 million paying down county capital spending and $2.9 million ACC borrowing, not from its $39.6 million bond issue
0.96 cents: dedicated county equipment plan, AKA the “penny plan,” $1.5 million including $401,330 for debt services, $1 million for replacement and rehabilitated vehicles including 12 new Sheriff’s cars, a new ambulance and a “remounted” ambulance