Tag: elizabeth city

Elizabeth City to Russians: Nyet to monument

“Despite disagreeing strongly with the decision, we do understand the underlying motive a majority of Elizabeth City city councilors had for recently rejecting an agreement to install a Russian-funded monument at the city’s Coast Guard Park: anger at the Russian government for attempting to hack our elections….

“It is, however, the wrong decision. It’s wrong because the monument the Russians want to put up at our park is more than about our political disagreements of the moment. Unlike Confederate monuments, which pay tribute to a divisive period of our nation’s past, the Russian monument would pay tribute to one of the best moments of our past — our collaboration with Russia and Great Britain to defeat Hitler’s Nazi Germany in the Second World War….”

— From “Reconsider WWII monument; it’s ours, too,” editorial in the Elizabeth City Daily Advance (March 4)

Elizabeth City welcomes Margaret Sanger

On this day in 1919: In Elizabeth City, Margaret Sanger delivers the South’s first public lecture on birth control.

Sanger, a New Yorker invited by maverick newspaper editor W.O. Saunders, will recall later that she was skeptical of her reception “in a city in which not even a suffragist had delivered a public lecture. To my delight, however, I found that people, both black and white . . . were so eager to know about birth control that every possible moment of my time was given to speaking. . . .

“Never have I met with more sympathy, more serious attention, more complete understanding than in . . . this Southern mill town.”