SALISBURY — The city announced Thursday that a meeting about the Confederate monument “Fame” will be held Monday at the Salisbury Civic Center to accommodate the larger crowd that is expected.

The Civic Center is at 315 S. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ave. The meeting was originally planned for City Council Chambers.

The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. Monday with City Attorney Graham Corriher presenting a memorandum about the city’s authority to relocate the monument. Then, the public will be given two hours to speak. The meeting is expected to end at 8:15 p.m.

Council members said if more people show up to speak than time will allow, they will have another special meeting to hear from residents about “Fame.” 

The Confederate monument on the median at West Innes and Church streets was vandalized with paint in March and August. Groups including the Salisbury-Rowan NAACP, Salisbury Indivisible and Women for Community Justice have called for the relocation of “Fame.” The United Daughters of the Confederacy owns the statue and the land it sits on.

The city granted the UDC the right to use the land in 1908 in a resolution recorded at the Rowan County Register of Deeds Office.

Corriher will explain his legal opinion that because of a state law passed in 2015 and the city’s resolution, the city is limited in options to relocate “Fame” without the agreement of the UDC.

In his memorandum, Corriher says, “The city’s authority to relocate the monument is strictly limited by application of state law and by the city’s prior resolution granting to the UDC the perpetual right to use the median.”

The Rowan Rifle’s Camp 405 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans wrote Mayor Al Heggins a letter to explain why members of the group declined her invitation to discuss the monument at a previous meeting and questioning what is left to discuss after the City Council voted two years ago that the city has no jurisdiction to move “Fame.”

“We do not understand the need for this meeting, as the only discussion that the City Council needs to offer is that they have no jurisdiction,” Commander Steve Poteat wrote. “Our absence should not be taken as a lack of concern for the monument. Quite the opposite … it is lack of concern for a meeting that is being held to discuss a moot point.”

City officials said participants in Monday’s meeting are encouraged to speak within a three-minute time limit and to remain civil and respectful as comments are shared.