Business owner reports receiving threats, sometimes wears bullet proof vest
Devon Henry, a Black businessman, has discovered the perils associated with doing a job that carries sinister undertones and nobody wants to do – removing Confederate Monuments.
Team Henry Enterprises has removed more than three dozen statues in Virginia and the Southeast. The company’s owner, Devon Henry, says he has faced threats to the point that he has obtained his conceal-carry license and now carries a gun and has tightened security around his home and business.
The New York Times reported that he sometimes wears a bullet-proof vest.
“You start thinking, Damn, was it worth it?” Henry told the Times. “But then there are moments; my daughter, in her interview for college, said I was her hero.”
Henry told the Times that he and his crew have been the victim of roughly six dozen racial slurs by his count.
In June of 2020, then Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam ordered the 60-foot statue of Robert E. Lee removed from Monument Avenue in Richmond. His decision came in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the demonstrations that followed. The protestors directed their anger at Confederate symbols as vestiges of racism and hate.
But the state found it had an issue after ordering the statue’s removal.
“Nobody would take this job,” Clark Mercer, Northam’s former chief of staff, told the New York Times. “Some of the folks who were asked to take it down were pretty overtly racist with their comments.”
Enter Henry.
“It was actually from the governor’s side,” Henry told NBC12 in an interview. “They said, ‘We want to take down Lee, but we can’t find anyone to do it. Can you do it?’ ”
There were times Henry wondered whether he was doing the right thing. There continue to be strong feelings on whether the monuments should be removed or not.
“First and foremost, it was the safety component. Not just for me but my team. They have a family, as well as my family. You think about New Orleans, where the contractor had his car blown up. You think about what happened in Charlottesville. There’s a lot of emotion around these statues on both sides,” Henry said in the NBC12 interview.
But he has persevered.
In 1890 John Mitchell Jr., the civil rights campaigner and editor of the Richmond Planet, fought against the Lee monument saying these words of Black men, “He put up the Lee Monument, and should the time come, he’ll be there to take it down.” reports The Richmond-Times Dispatch.
He was right.
TheGrio is FREE on your TV via Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku and Android TV. Also, please download theGrio mobile apps today!
The post Black-owned business faces threats for removing dozens of Confederate monuments appeared first on TheGrio.
