Leftists Continue Crusade Against Robeson County Monument (NC)

"Visiting the Robeson County Courthouse has always been solemn and painful for the Rev. Derek McNair."

Jan 14, 2026

“Visiting the Robeson County Courthouse has always been solemn and painful for the Rev. Derek McNair.”

(Dixie Drudge) - Just google Rev. Derek McNair for a quick resume of his experience as another one of those civil rights hucksters. Once again, Rev. McNair is searching for a headlines and notoriety at the citizens of Robeson county and Lumberton, NC’s expense. His latest call to remove the Robeson county Confederate monument is just the latest effort in self-promotion.

McNair bills himself as the head of Ministers for Justice of Robeson County. If you’ve ever been involved in heritage or other conservation efforts, you will have experienced opposition from an avalanche of left-leaning social groups with ‘Big”-sounding names that band together in coalitions against you. This is a time-tested tactic of the Amerikan left. It gives the illusion of overwhelming support for their cause de jour. The tactic works. That’s why they use it.

Often these ‘groups’ are just 2-3 people. Other times, they are just one individual with a letterhead and maybe a website. Many are not local, or even in state. The one thing they have in common is that they give good press-release and get their message out to an uber-compliant liberal media to establish the illusion of strength and inevitability for their crusade. Most are professional or at least semi-pro agitators collecting donations and grants from outside leftist fund brokers, like Tides or the SPLC. They will also have a leftist lawyer with a history of legal agitation making their filings and running interference for them. In this case, NC attorney David Ferrell Branch Jr.

County commissioners voted 6-2 in late 2022 to move the statue to Memorial Park, a planned green space downtown. But Ministers for Justice isn’t satisfied. They don’t want the statue in a city park, either. They argue that it belongs in a Confederate cemetery or other privately owned space.

Don’t let their reasonable-sounding rhetoric fool you. They don’t want the monument anywhere, even on private property.

In a recent Border Belt Independent piece, McNair was quoted to have said, “It was just never a good feeling to know that you have any form of business at the Robeson County Courthouse… That statue brings a darkness, an evilness, a wickedness, a spirit of injustice over people who were enslaved and oppressed by the Confederacy.”

Of course, McNair was never enslaved and if he is oppressed by a 100-year-old marble man he really has bigger psychological issues than what monument is at the local courthouse.