While much of the nation is talking about removing monuments, the discussion in one Western North Carolina county is also about installing them — and that discussion is no less contentious. 

Last month, members of the Haywood Branch of the NAACP took a trip to Montgomery, Alabama to visit a museum honoring more than 800 Americans who were lynched between 1877 and 1950.

There’s a monument there for each one of them — a long, steel box resembling a coffin, engraved with their names and places of death. One bears the inscription, “George Ratcliff, Haywood County.”

Almost 120 years ago, local newspapers reported two separate instances of attempted rape in Haywood County. 

Similarities between the two cases are many. Both victims were young girls under the age of 11, both alleged perpetrators were grown men, both knew their victims, both were apprehended and both were immediately jailed.