Another thinkpiece on Rebel Monuments.
I am deeply interested in the Civil War. I consume a lot of documentaries and historical books. I portray a Union soldier as a sometime-re-enactor. I have toured six of the national battlefields so far, and one of my ancestors was wounded at Gettysburg (on the third day, my guess during the artillery barrage before Pickett’s Charge). I am interested.
It’s fantastic to find other people to discuss this important and pivotal time in American—and world—history. Stories about heroic bravery, dumb luck and masterful strategy abound; personal details and anecdotes preserved in diaries and letters connect us to the nearly three million people who fought—and the more than 500,000 who died—in the largest bloodbath our nation has ever seen.
So I was surprised as the national conversation emanated from the horrific violence in Virginia—since the white supremacists were in town to preserve a statue of Robert E. Lee, this was a teaching moment about the actual history of most Confederate monuments with national potential. It seemed like people were becoming more interested in discussing the War, and its implications regarding Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and even Black Lives Matter.
Yet as it turns out, most people apparently don’t care about the actual War, or about how those monuments actually got there.
There’s a lot to be said about the denigration of the south in the years immediately following the War—Reconstruction was, in many ways, an exercise in condemnation and condescension from the north, who used militarized tactics to enforce order, not to reunify the country. Disgraced southerners used this as justification to dig in even deeper, but some were genuinely interested in preserving the historically significant areas and using structures as a testament and memorial to their loved ones’ sacrifice. In Manassas, Virginia, a separate cemetery contains reclaimed Confederate bodies, made possible by painstaking work of the Daughters of the Confederacy beginning in 1867.
Only a handful of structures went up in the decades just after the War. The great majority of the statues in parks, courthouse lawns, schoolyards and city squares arrived much later. After “Birth of a Nation” rejuvenated the inflated sense of righteousness for the ‘Lost Cause’ and twisted the narrative to justify commitment to said Cause, hundreds of statues appeared in public places with no historical significance. Membership in the KKK (created by ex-Confederates) skyrocketed after “Birth of a Nation,” and 3-4 million people were a huge block of voters, taxpayers, and undoubtedly some police forces, schools, and halls of ‘justice’. Subsequently, homage to Confederates appeared—not to remember the sacrifice of the dead, but to reaffirm their town’s commitment to white supremacy. The next trend in monument manifestation was during the 1950s, as a direct response to the Civil Rights movement when the War had been over more almost a century. (Graphs and research on this courtesy of the SPLC)
Many claim that the statues need to remain because they’re part of our history. Yet when one attempts discussion at the monuments’ true origin, the interest in history evaporates. So many of those who espouse desire to acknowledge America’s history have neither an inkling of the myriad terrifying acts of violence committed by lynch-mobs, nor any desire to understand why a symbol of oppression might be harmful to a community whose members were routinely kidnapped, tortured, and murdered with the blessing of municipal government.
The reason why the Confederacy is still on the stage is pretty simple: Robert E. Lee is much more endearing than Adolf Hitler. Lee has had centuries’ worth of rebranding—thanks to millions of people, reaffirming every day various legends and folklore meant to cast him as a virtuous hero with zero flaws—yarns that began to weave before the War was even over.
Robert E. Lee has six statues (four others have been removed) not on battlefields, 23 roads, two holidays and 19 grade schools. Emmett Till has one sign near the riverbank where he was brutally murdered, which is six years old and routinely defaced. Mary Turner, her husband Hayes, and their baby have one sign, erected in 2010. They are two of the hundreds who met unimaginable fates at the hands of white mobs, and having any memorial marker at all is an exception to the rule.
We are obliged to remember our history, so as to avoid repeating it. These negative moments in our past, of oppression and systemic denigration of black people among them, are important to never forget. But they don’t need to be propped onto literal pedestals as a paragon of virtue in order to heed the warning. When we talk about “our history,” it seems more like people are choosing which moments in history to prioritize.
Besides, it’s clear from Charlottesville that some people still don’t believe all are created equal, and it’s obvious no number of statues will teach them.
Equal Justice Initiative, which among many projects is working toward a lynching memorial: https://eji.org/national-lynching-memorial
American Experience episode on Emmitt Till (graphic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-X4is9jMYk
Remembering Mary Turner (and a database of known lynchings in Georgia): http://www.maryturner.org/
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