Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Historic Monumentation topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Senate committee advances bill for monument recognizing early voluntary school integration in Charleston and Fayetteville
Summary
The Senate committee voted to pass legislation to place a privately funded monument on the Capitol grounds honoring the voluntary integration of schools in Charleston and Fayetteville, measures that supporters say predate and expand the narrative around Hoxie’s 1955 integration.
Senators on the Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs voted to pass Senate Bill 489 on a voice vote after brief testimony from local school leaders, advancing a separate monument to recognize voluntary school integration in Charleston and Fayetteville.
Senator Greg Ledding, District 30, told the committee the bill responds to concerns that a recently approved Capitol monument to Hoxie (Act 251 of 2025) told only part of the story. “Fayetteville is often credited, inaccurately, as being the first,” Ledding said, arguing that Charleston and Fayetteville voluntarily integrated before Hoxie and deserve recognition.
The bill’s backers — including Melissa Moore, superintendent of Charleston School District, and Alan Wilburn, executive director of communications for Fayetteville Public Schools — said their communities voted to integrate before Hoxie and want their decisions memorialized. Moore told senators that the school board’s decision was unanimous and that few members of that generation remain to tell the story. Wilburn recalled a 2004 reenactment and said the votes taken in the 1950s are a “proud moment” in his district’s history.
Ledding said funding for the monument would be private, with the state responsible for maintenance if the monument is placed on Capitol grounds. “It would all be private funding just as with the previous monument,” he said. The bill as filed would authorize a monument recognizing Charleston and Fayetteville’s roles; it does not include Hoxie’s contribution.
Committee members asked whether the three communities might combine efforts into a single monument; Ledding said that remains possible but that Representative Fran Kavanaugh’s bill recognizing Hoxie had already become law and that Charleston and Fayetteville pursued separate legislation to ensure their stories are recorded. Several senators urged collaboration to avoid multiple, potentially competing monuments.
Action: Committee members moved and seconded a do-pass recommendation; the committee voice-voted in favor and the clerk recorded that the bill passed out of committee.
Senate Bill 489 now moves to the full Senate for further consideration.
