Josephus Daniels’ descendants wrestle with his statue and a legacy of white supremacy
For more than 34 years, the statue of Josephus Daniels stood on the east side of downtown Raleigh’s Nash Square, an eight-foot figure honoring the former owner and publisher of The News & Observer who was once arguably the most powerful man in North Carolina.
The metal statue presented Daniels in a three-piece suit, holding a wide-brimmed hat in his left hand and waving his right hand at the building across McDowell Street that was until recently home to his newspaper. To a passerby, it was unclear whether Daniels, who was 85 when he died in 1948, was waving hello or goodbye.
Last Tuesday, it was goodbye.
His descendants, who erected the statue on the city square in 1985 and retained ownership of it, hired a crane and a flatbed truck to arrive at daybreak and cart it off to storage. They acted out of safety concerns and respect for the movement against systemic racism that might have forcibly brought it down.
For all his accomplishments and contributions to the public good, Daniels’ legacy is forever stained by his advocacy of white supremacy. In 1898, his crusade against the rising political power of Blacks set the stage for a white mob’s attack on a Black-owned Wilmington newspaper. Dozens were murdered and the city’s government overthrown in what has been called America’s only successful coup. Daniels’ racist campaign helped to drive Blacks out of office across North Carolina and paved the way for the state’s Jim Crow era.
The Daniels family commissioned the statue to honor their patriarch’s memory, but also hoped that over time his ugliest actions could be forgotten, or at least forgiven as a reflection of his times.
For decades that seemed to be the case. A Raleigh school bore Daniels’ name. The News & Observer editorial page daily featured a quote from Daniels’ will calling on the paper to always “devote itself to the policies of equality and justice to the underprivileged.” Daniels’ son, grandson and great-grandson ran the newspaper in that spirit before selling it to McClatchy in 1995.
But it was the words of another native North Carolinian, George Floyd, pleading “I can’t breathe” as a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck, that made it impossible to forget or forgive the oppression that Daniels supported.
Frank Daniels III, a former News & Observer executive editor, said that unlike many now controversial statues, the monument to his great-grandfather was an expression of his family’s affection, not a political statement. But, he said in a telephone interview from his home near Nashville, Tenn., “When you take that intimacy away and then look at his life, you have to say that his legacy of public service does not transcend actions he took to favor white folks over Black folks.”
David Woronoff, a great-grandson of Josephus Daniels and publisher of The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines, arranged for the statue’s quiet removal.
“It’s not a Confederate monument but certainly he was part of a dark chapter in our state’s history and our family’s history as well,” Woronoff told me. “We spent the last 75 years trying to put the family on the right side of history and we’re proud of that. One way to stay on the right side is to remove his statue from the park.”
In addition to owning the newspaper, Daniels was secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, ambassador to Mexico under President Franklin Roosevelt and a strong supporter of the state’s public schools and women’s suffrage.
“He was a historical figure. He was important to North Carolina,” Frank Daniels III said. “I hope that he is not forgotten. I hope we learn from the good and the bad that he did.”
Barnett: 919-829-4512, nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
