State budget funds new Billy Graham, Revolutionary War monuments in Raleigh
State budget money will add Billy Graham and Revolutionary War monuments to the Capitol grounds, the first new statues there since Confederate monuments came down in 2020.
North Carolina’s new budget will pay for two new monuments on the State Capitol grounds in downtown Raleigh: a Billy Graham tribute and a Revolutionary War monument.
The projects will go up at the State Capitol on Union Square, where North Carolina has kept its seat of government since 1840. The grounds already hold monuments and statues honoring North Carolina presidents, Confederate figures, and veterans of the Civil War and Vietnam War.
The Billy Graham monument will be a duplicate of the statue already in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection. The Architect of the Capitol lists Billy Graham Jr. in the Capitol Crypt. North Carolina’s General Assembly requested in 2015 that Graham replace Charles Brantley Aycock in the collection, and the bronze statue was unveiled at the U.S. Capitol on May 16, 2024.
State Rep. John A. Torbett, a Republican from Gaston County who represents House District 108, said the Graham statue would be placed where schoolchildren and visitors would see it regularly.
The Revolutionary War monument is part of the state’s wider America 250 NC commemoration, which began in 2024 and runs through 2033, with 2026 marked as a focal year. The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources also staged Capitol 250: NC Freedom Fest on July 4, 2026 at the State Capitol building and grounds in Raleigh.
The new spending comes after the last major change to the grounds: removal of the 1895 Confederate Monument. The Department of Administration completed the removal on June 26, 2020 after a public-safety determination. In that same petition, the department said the North Carolina Historical Commission has approval authority before a monument may be placed on state property.
Earlier budget cycles had also floated other monument ideas, including an African American memorial, before those plans disappeared.
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