tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/confederate-monuments-39278/articlesConfederate Monuments – The Conversation2024-01-30T13:33:53Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2178952024-01-30T13:33:53Z2024-01-30T13:33:53ZFor 150 years, Black journalists have known what Confederate monuments really stood for<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571511/original/file-20240125-21-3a2puj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=494%2C187%2C2976%2C2596&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Confederate leaders Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis are depicted in this carving on Stone Mountain, Ga. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-confederate-generals-carved-into-stone-mountain-in-news-photo/3094974?adppopup=true">MPI/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In October 2023, nearly seven years after the deadly <a href="https://time.com/charlottesville-white-nationalist-rally-clashes/">Unite the Right</a> white supremacist rally, the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2023/civil-war-monument-melting-robert-e-lee-confederate/">melted down</a>. Since then, two more major Confederate monuments have been removed: the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/arlington-cemetery-confederate-monument/676965/">Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery</a> and the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/confederate-monuments-jacksonville-florida-eb85c70216603e180db5df851f0f852c">Monument to the Women of the Confederacy in Jacksonville, Florida</a>.</p>
<p>Defenders of Confederate monuments have argued that the statues <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/the-meaning-of-our-confederate-monuments.html">should be left standing</a> to educate future generations. One such defender is former President Donald Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee in 2024.</p>
<p>“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-history-defending-confederate-heritage-political-risk-analysis/story?id=71199968">Trump tweeted</a> in 2017. “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”</p>
<p>But since the end of the Civil War, journalists at Black newspapers have told a different story. Despite meager financing and constant threats, these newspapers represented the views of Black Americans and documented the nation’s shortcomings in achieving racial equality. </p>
<p>According to many of these writers, the statues were never designed to <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/beyond-monuments-african-americans-contesting-civil-war-memory/">tell the truth</a> about the Civil War. Instead, the monuments were built to enshrine the myth of the “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/growing-up-in-the-shadow-of-the-confederacy/537501/">Lost Cause</a>,” the false claim that white Southerners nobly fought for states’ rights – and not to <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp">preserve slavery</a>.</p>
<p>In 1921, for instance, the Chicago Defender published an article under the headline “Tear the Spirit of the Confederacy from the South” and called for the <a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/why-honor-them">removal of the statues</a> from across the country because they “lend inspiration to the heart of the lyncher.” </p>
<h2>‘Lost Cause’ propaganda</h2>
<p>For the last several years, I’ve <a href="https://falseimage.pennds.org/introduction/">studied the history of Confederate monuments</a> by poring over the letters and records of the organizations that campaigned for their construction. My research students and I have also <a href="https://falseimage.pennds.org/">reviewed countless reactions</a> to the monuments published in real time in Black newspapers.</p>
<p>What is clear is that from the late nineteenth century until today, Confederate monuments were part of a relentless propaganda campaign to restore the South’s reputation at dedication ceremonies, parades, reunions and Memorial Day events.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://archive.org/details/ProceedingsOfTheThirty-seventhAnnualReunionOfTheVirginiaGrandCamp">dedication in Charlottesville</a> of the Lee monument in 1924 – 100 years ago this May – was one such event. </p>
<p>Timed to coincide with a reunion of the <a href="https://scv.org/">Sons of Confederate Veterans</a>, the speakers openly bragged about how they were sweeping Northern-authored textbooks out of Southern schools and replacing them with <a href="https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/education/2020/12/03/southern-history-textbooks-long-history-deception/6327359002/">friendlier accounts</a> of the Civil War. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Underneath a burning cross, a group of white men dressed in white robes and white hoods march holding American flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571519/original/file-20240125-21-en2mp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571519/original/file-20240125-21-en2mp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571519/original/file-20240125-21-en2mp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571519/original/file-20240125-21-en2mp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571519/original/file-20240125-21-en2mp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571519/original/file-20240125-21-en2mp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571519/original/file-20240125-21-en2mp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ku Klux Klan members march under a burning cross near Washington in 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/arlington-park-va-composite-photo-of-ku-klux-klan-members-news-photo/515204254?adppopup=true">Bettmann Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In the weeks leading up to the dedication, members of the Ku Klux Klan <a href="https://search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/uva_library/items/uva-lib:2590120">paraded down Charlottesville’s Main Street</a> in daylight and <a href="https://search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/uva_library/items/uva-lib:2590109">burned crosses in the hills</a> at night.</p>
<p>The master of ceremonies of that unveiling was <a href="https://www.cvillepedia.org/Richard_Thomas_Walker_Duke_Jr.">R.T.W. Duke, Jr.</a>, the son of a Confederate colonel who was a popular orator at events like these. </p>
<p>A few years earlier, Duke made his own views of the Civil War plain. </p>
<p>He told a crowd gathered at a Confederate cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, that he was “still a believer in the righteousness of what some of our own people now call the ‘rebellion.‘”</p>
<p>Duke further said “that slavery was right and emancipation a violation of the Constitution, a wrong and a robbery.”</p>
<h2>A critical Black press</h2>
<p>Contrary to the claims of today’s defenders of Confederate monuments, a <a href="https://falseimage.pennds.org/essays/">review of Black newspapers</a> going back to the 1870s conducted by my research team shows that Black journalists’ criticism of these memorials had already begun by the late nineteenth century. </p>
<p>The first truly national Confederate monument was the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond. It was unveiled before an audience of as many as 150,000 attendees on May 29, 1890, and provoked sharp alarm among Black commentators across the country.</p>
<p>In a May 31, 1890, article, <a href="https://www.civilwarrichmond.com/written-accounts/post-war-newspapers/richmond-planet/6161-1890-05-31-richmond-planet-editorial-decrying-the-erection-of-the-lee-statue-on-monument-avenue-and-the-improper-use-of-confederate-imagery-and-memory">Richmond Planet</a> editor John Mitchell, Jr. pointed out that Confederate flags and emblems far outnumbered U.S. flags at the unveiling.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A Black man wearing a business suit sits at a desk with his right hand on a sheet of paper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571515/original/file-20240125-21-44dqbz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571515/original/file-20240125-21-44dqbz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571515/original/file-20240125-21-44dqbz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571515/original/file-20240125-21-44dqbz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571515/original/file-20240125-21-44dqbz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571515/original/file-20240125-21-44dqbz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571515/original/file-20240125-21-44dqbz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Mitchell Jr. at the Richmond Planet in 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/7808hpr_aab81de2428104d-scaled.jpg">Encyclopedia Virginia</a></span>
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<p>“This glorification of States Rights Doctrine, the right of ‘secession’ and the honoring of men who represented that cause, fosters in this Republic the spirit of Rebellion and will ultimately result in handing down to generations unborn a legacy of treason and blood,” Mitchell wrote. </p>
<p>Mitchell further <a href="https://theshockoeexaminer.blogspot.com/2020/06/john-mitchell-jr-and-richmond-planet.html">detailed the enthusiasm</a> of the crowd assembled in Richmond. </p>
<p>“Cheer after cheer rang out upon the air as fair women waved handkerchiefs and screamed to do honor,” Mitchell wrote. But the South’s insistence on celebrating Lee “serves to retard its progress in the country and forges heavier chains with which to be bound.”</p>
<p>By reprinting articles from other Black publications, the Planet in 1890 effectively created <a href="https://falseimage.pennds.org/essay/lee-in-richmond-forging-heavier-chains/">a forum for commentary on the Richmond Lee statue from around the country</a>. </p>
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<img alt="A large statue is seen in the middle of a park that depicts a white man siting atop a horse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571528/original/file-20240125-21-rww437.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571528/original/file-20240125-21-rww437.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571528/original/file-20240125-21-rww437.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571528/original/file-20240125-21-rww437.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571528/original/file-20240125-21-rww437.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571528/original/file-20240125-21-rww437.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571528/original/file-20240125-21-rww437.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va., in 1905.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/equestrian-statue-of-robert-e-lee-in-richmond-virginia-in-news-photo/835252424?adppopup=true">Library of Congress/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>An article republished from the National Home Protector, a Baltimore-based Black newspaper, also took aim at the statue.</p>
<p>“When the unveiling of the monument is used as an opportunity to justify the southern people in rebelling against the U.S. government and to flaunt the Confederate flag in the faces of the loyal people of the nation the occasion calls for serious reflection,” the article said. </p>
<p>The editors of the newspaper accused white Southerners of trying to use the glorification of Lee to resurrect the “corpse of rebellion.” </p>
<h2>Writing truth to power</h2>
<p>No one knows what the Black-owned Charlottesville Messenger said about the unveiling of the Lee monument in its city in 1924.</p>
<p>Only one copy <a href="https://search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/uva_library/items/u3832085?idx=0&page=1">of a single issue still exists</a>. In fact, one of the only things known about the Messenger is that in 1921, the white-dominated Charlottesville Daily Progress <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/08/10/charlottesvilles-confederate-statues-still-stand-still-symbolize-racist-past/">reprinted a Messenger article</a> that called for Black civil rights. The Black newspaper later retracted the story after receiving threats from white supremacists.</p>
<p>But we do know what other Black newspapers of this period were saying about Confederate monuments. For many Black editors, the monuments had become symbols of the violent backlash against Black citizenship by white Southerners. </p>
<p>In 1925, the <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/the-pittsburgh-couriers-discursive-power-1910-1940/">Pittsburgh Courier</a>, criticized the Confederate carving on Stone Mountain in Georgia, the <a href="https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/19119/stone-mountains-hidden-history-americas-biggest-confederate-memorial-and-birthplace-of-the-modern-ku-klux-klan">site of the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan</a>. </p>
<p>Taking square aim at the Lost Cause myth, the newspaper called Stone Mountain “a living monument of the cause to which white Southerners have dedicated their lives: human slavery and color selfishness.” </p>
<p>The Confederate monument on the side of Stone Mountain still stands today. </p>
<p>Telling the truth about American history requires transforming these memorials into true reflections of the seemingly never-ending battles initially fought during the Civil War.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donovan Schaefer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>At the turn of the 20th century, Southern sympathizers started building monuments to Confederate leaders. Black newspaper editors saw these emblems clearly for what they stood for – a lost cause.Donovan Schaefer, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2082752023-08-08T12:28:52Z2023-08-08T12:28:52ZWhen Confederate-glorifying monuments went up in the South, voting in Black areas went down<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541540/original/file-20230807-32816-6usu56.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4556%2C3136&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstrators hold Confederate flags near the monument for Confederacy President Jefferson Davis on June 25, 2015, in Richmond, Va., after it was spray-painted with the phrase 'Black Lives Matter.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DavisStatueVandalized/ebf030ed819f4497a47fa322218756f4/photo?Query=Confederate%20monuments&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1935&currentItemNo=139">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Confederate monuments <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/09/421531368/south-carolina-gov-nikki-haley-to-sign-confederate-flag-bill-into-law">burst into public consciousness in 2015</a> when a shooting at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, instigated the first broad calls for their removal. The shooter intended to start a race war and had posed with Confederate imagery in photos posted online.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/16/us/confederate-monuments-removed.html">Monument removal efforts grew in 2017</a> after a counterprotester was killed at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacist groups defended the preservation of Confederate monuments. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970610428/nearly-100-confederate-monuments-removed-in-2020-report-says-more-than-700-remai">Removal movements saw widespread success in 2020</a> following George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police.</p>
<p>These events <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/us/racist-statues-controversial-monuments-in-america-robert-lee-columbus/index.html">linked Confederate monuments to modern racist beliefs</a> and acts. But whether monuments carry inherent racism or are merely misinterpreted requires further exploration.</p>
<p><a href="http://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20211067">Research by economist Jhacova A. Williams has shown</a> that Black Americans who live in areas that have a relatively higher number of streets named after prominent Confederate generals “are less likely to be employed, are more likely to be employed in low-status occupations, and have lower wages compared to Whites.” </p>
<p><a href="https://alexntaylor.github.io">I study economic and political history</a> and have researched the effects of <a href="http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4451402">Confederate monuments in the post-Civil War South</a>. I found that these symbols helped solidify the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law">Jim Crow era</a>, which established segregation across the South and lasted from the 1880s until the 1960s. These symbols were accompanied by increases in the vote share of the <a href="https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/blackrights/jimcrow">Democratic Party – the racist party</a> that had supported slavery and, after the Civil War, supported segregation for another century. The building of these monuments was also accompanied by reductions in voter turnout. Further research I conducted shows that these political effects disproportionately occurred in areas with a larger share of Black residents. </p>
<p>In other words, as these monuments were erected, the vote increased for members of the then-racist Democratic Party, and people turned out to vote in lower numbers in predominantly Black areas.</p>
<p>These findings demonstrate that a connection existed between racism and these monuments from their inception – and provide context for modern monument debates.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People hold a large tarpaulin beneath a statue of a man riding a horse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Richmond, Va., city workers prepare to drape a tarp over a statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ConfederateMonumentsProtest/31b060bdbdd84f349a5bc96319bcccc3/photo">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span>
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<h2>Monumental history</h2>
<p>The South saw almost no monument dedications during the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_whose_heritage_timeline_print.pdf">Monuments first appeared during the Reconstruction era</a> – 1865 to 1877 – when Southern states were occupied by the North and integrated back into the Union. </p>
<p>Reconstruction-era monuments in general <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ghosts-of-the-confederacy-9780195054200?cc=be&lang=en&#">did not glorify the Confederacy</a>. These monuments largely honored the dead and were placed in cemeteries and spaces distant from daily life. They compartmentalized the trauma of the war, commemorating lives but not placing the Confederacy at the center of Southern identity.</p>
<p>As Reconstruction neared its end in 1875, a <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2015651796/">Stonewall Jackson monument erected in Richmond, Virginia</a>, foreshadowed the different monuments to come. </p>
<p>The monument’s dedication drew 50,000 spectators and included a military-style parade. The potential presence of a local all-Black militia <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674008199">proved to be controversial</a>. To avoid accusations of race mixing, organizers planned to place the militia and any other Black participants in the back of the parade. </p>
<p>The militia did not attend, likely in anticipation of the controversy, and the only Black Southerners present in the parade were formerly enslaved people who had served in the <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/stonewall-brigade/">Confederacy’s Stonewall Brigade</a>. This stark picture of Southern race relations served as a preview of political developments to come.</p>
<p>This trend continued after Reconstruction, which ended with the <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/struggle_president.html">Compromise of 1877</a>. This compromise settled the disputed 1876 presidential election, giving Republicans the presidency and <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813108131/the-life-and-death-of-the-solid-south/">Democrats, then a pro-segregation party</a>, full political control of the South. Democrats subsequently established what would become known as <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312302412/americannightmare">Jim Crow laws</a> across the South, an array of restrictive and discriminatory laws that disenfranchised Black Southerners and made them second-class citizens.</p>
<p>Monuments played a cultural role in establishing the Jim Crow South. Unlike Reconstruction monuments, post-Reconstruction monuments were erected in prominent public spaces, and their focus shifted toward the portrayal and glorification of famous Confederates. Monument dedication ceremonies were particularly popular around the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/whose-heritage">peaking in 1911</a>.</p>
<p>Additional Confederate monuments have been dedicated since that period, but those numbers pale in comparison to the monument-building spree of 1878 to 1912.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two flags fly near a monument to a soldier." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mississippi state and U.S. flags fly near the Rankin County Confederate Monument in the downtown square of Brandon, Miss., on March 3, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ConfederateMemorialDay/337ff60bdb974c22ab9798576adc1d15/photo">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Monumental effects</h2>
<p><a href="http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4451402">My research</a> investigates the political effects of Confederate monuments in the Reconstruction and early post-Reconstruction – 1877-1912 – eras, namely their effects on Democratic Party vote share and voter turnout.</p>
<p>I expected monuments’ potential effects to be directly related to their centrality to everyday life and glorification of the Confederacy. This is the primary difference between soldier-memorializing Reconstruction and Confederate-glorifying post-Reconstruction monuments. </p>
<p>I expected to find little political effect from soldier-memorializing Reconstruction monuments, but some pro-Jim Crow effects from Confederate-glorifying post-Reconstruction monuments. As monuments moved from cemeteries into central public spaces such as parks and squares, I expected them to affect voters’ decisions.</p>
<p>That is precisely what I found. </p>
<p>During Reconstruction, counties that dedicated Confederate monuments saw no change in voter turnout or Democratic Party vote share in biennial congressional elections. These symbols were soldier-memorializing and physically separate from public life and did not influence voter decision-making.</p>
<p>However, when monuments began to glorify the Confederacy and shifted into public life, political effects emerged. </p>
<p>Counties that dedicated monuments in the early post-Reconstruction period saw, on average, a 5.5 percentage point increase in Democratic Party vote share and a 2.2 percentage point decrease in voter turnout compared with other counties.</p>
<p>As monuments changed, so did their effect on the public. Glorifying public monuments communicated to the public that the Confederacy was worth preserving, thus strengthening Democratic majorities and lowering participation in the political process.</p>
<p>Larger Democratic majorities alongside lower voter turnout already suggests Black Southerners, who almost exclusively voted for Republicans at that time, were voting less in areas with monuments. I conducted further exploration and found that these political effects disproportionately occurred in counties with larger Black populations. This suggests that Black voters were more responsive to Confederate monuments, which suppressed their political activity by signaling they were not accepted by the local community.</p>
<p>The effects of post-Reconstruction monuments suggest that they played a role in continued racism throughout the South into the early 20th century. </p>
<p>Their controversy today demonstrates the values still conveyed by their presence in society. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad014">Recent research</a> has demonstrated the long-run effects of the spread of Southern white culture and prejudices across the United States post-Civil War, connecting it to higher levels of modern-day Republican Party voting and conservative values. </p>
<p>It is thus no wonder Confederate monuments, as prominent symbols of pro-Confederate, Southern white culture, continue to be – and are likely to remain – cultural flashpoints.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander N. Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The drive to remove Confederate monuments links those monuments to modern racism. An economic historian shows that the intent and effect of those monuments from inception was to perpetuate racism.Alexander N. Taylor, PhD Candidate in Economics, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2059502023-05-31T12:40:05Z2023-05-31T12:40:05ZUS Army Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas’ journey from enslaver to Union officer to civil rights defender<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528104/original/file-20230524-24-o2jesj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=161%2C209%2C6107%2C6917&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, who fought for the Union army during the Civil War, stands in uniform for a photo.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-george-h-thomas-u-s-a-between-1860-and-1875-artist-news-photo/1410616141?adppopup=true">Heritage Images/ Hulton Archive</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Southern states <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-taking-down-confederate-memorials-is-only-a-first-step-78020">tear down Confederate statues</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/symbols-of-the-confederacy-are-slowly-coming-down-from-us-military-bases-3-essential-reads-205729">military removes the names of Confederate generals from bases</a>, the issue of how to remember the Civil War is increasingly prominent. </p>
<p>Are white Southerners condemned to think of themselves as the bad guys, the ones who were willing to destroy the Union to preserve slavery? Or are there other types of heritage in which they can take pride? </p>
<p>Growing up in Virginia in the 1970s, I was taught that Confederate generals like <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/julyaugust/feature/how-did-robert-e-lee-become-american-icon">Robert E. Lee</a> and <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a57064/stonewall-jackson-descendants-open-letter/">Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson</a> were heroes who fought to defend their native state from Northern aggression. </p>
<p>As an adult, I read more widely about the Civil War and became fascinated with Union Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, who grew up in Virginia but joined the Union army. I’m a sociology scholar today. But, as a student of historical sociology, <a href="https://www.oupress.com/9780806141213/george-thomas/">I researched and wrote a biography</a> of Thomas to understand his decision.</p>
<p>While most people talk of the Civil War in terms of the North versus the South, in reality the conflict was between secessionists, who favored leaving the United States, and Unionists, who wanted to keep the country together. While most Southerners favored secession, <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-south-vs-the-south-9780195156294?cc=us&lang=en&">there were many Southern Unionists</a>. </p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of African American Southerners <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/slavery-during-the-civil-war/">supported the Union by escaping slavery</a> and <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war">serving in the Union army</a>. But there were thousands of <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-south-vs-the-south-9780195156294?">white Southerners who also supported the Union</a>. George H. Thomas, <a href="https://www.civilwarmonitor.com/blog/rock-of-chickamauga">known to history as “the Rock of Chickamauga,”</a> is the most prominent of them.</p>
<p>Born in Southampton, Virginia, in 1816 to a wealthy family of enslavers, Thomas entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when he was 20 years old and became a career military officer. He served during U.S. conflicts with Native Americans and with distinction in the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/mexican-american-war">Mexican-American War</a>, which ended in 1848.</p>
<p>When the Civil War broke out, nearly all the Southern career officers left the U.S. Army to serve in the Confederacy. But, as his adjutant and first biographer wrote in “<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044019661180&view=1up&seq=44">The Life of Major-General George H. Thomas</a>,” Thomas viewed his oath as an army officer to defend the Constitution as more binding than his feelings of loyalty to his native state. </p>
<h2>Led African American troops</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a Union Army uniform sits atop a horse in the middle of a field." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Union Gen. George H. Thomas, sitting atop a horse, surveys his surroundings during the Civil War, between 1861 and 1865.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2013648715/">Retrieved from the Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the Civil War, Thomas first commanded a cavalry brigade in an attack of Virginia. He rose through the ranks to command a division, then a corps and, finally, an army. </p>
<p>After <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/mill-springs">winning a battle at Mill Springs, Kentucky</a>, in 1862, he served in the campaigns to capture Nashville, Chattanooga and Atlanta. </p>
<p>Thomas’ most significant contribution was at the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/chch/index.htm">Battle of Chickamauga</a> in Catoosa and Walker counties, Georgia, fought Sept. 19-20, 1863, where he held the field with a hastily improvised force after the majority of the Union troops had been routed. His bravery and skill earned him the nickname “the Rock of Chickamauga,” and his defense saved the Union force from destruction.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/william-t-sherman">Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman took his army</a> on its march through Georgia, Thomas stayed behind to defend Tennessee from the Confederates. At the <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/decisive-battle-nashville">Battle of Nashville</a>, waged December 15-16, 1864, Thomas and the 72,000 soldiers under his command nearly destroyed a 23,000-man Confederate force, taking thousands of prisoners and leaving the states of the western Confederacy under Union control.</p>
<p>At Nashville, Thomas commanded thousands of African American troops. His colleagues in the military later recalled that <a href="https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesofs00morg/page/22/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater">Thomas viewed African American troops as inferior soldiers</a>, not suited to offensive operations, and he relegated them to a part of his line that he thought would see no fighting. They attacked anyway, enduring huge losses in <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700606504/">repeated charges against Confederate entrenchments</a>. </p>
<p>Touring the battlefield after his victory, Thomas saw the African American dead piled in heaps before the Confederate fortifications. As a subordinate officer, Thomas J. Morgan, recalled, Thomas remarked, “<a href="https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesofs00morg/page/48/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater">Gentlemen, the question is settled. The Negro will fight</a>.” </p>
<p>The sacrifices of African American soldiers at Nashville and elsewhere were a heroic and tragic act, with meaning and significance that went far beyond their effect on the opinion of a single person. But their sacrifice profoundly changed Thomas’ racial views. Having seen African Americans as living up to his ideal of soldierly virtue, he began to view them as full human beings who had earned the rights of citizenship. </p>
<h2>Enslaver turned civil rights defender</h2>
<p>During and after the war came the Reconstruction Era, the period from 1863 to 1877 when the U.S. government worked to integrate the formerly enslaved into society and unite the country, Thomas commanded the Union force in Tennessee. There he protected newly freed Blacks from racist local officials and the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/ku-klux-klan">Ku Klux Klan</a>.</p>
<p>Here, my biography traced new ground, drawing upon military records in the National Archives to discover Thomas’ role. He used military courts to enforce fair <a href="https://www.history.com/news/black-codes-reconstruction-slavery">labor contracts between white landowners and Black workers</a>. </p>
<p>And in 1867, Thomas used military courts to try former Confederate soldiers who were now members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist groups, on the grounds that they had violated the terms of the paroles they had signed at the time of the surrender of the Confederate armies. As “The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant” indicate, <a href="https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=usg-volumes">Thomas used this tactic for several months</a> before one former Confederate challenged his arrest as unconstitutional. When the U.S. District Court judge ruled the prisoner must be released, Thomas wanted to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the attorney general’s office declined to support him.</p>
<p>When white local officials in Nashville began to <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary/southern-black-codes.html">arrest African American adults and teenagers for vagrancy</a>, a legal maneuver that allowed the officials to hire out the formerly enslaved for forced labor on plantations, Thomas threatened the officials with military detention, and they let the prisoners go. He protected Black voters from <a href="https://time.com/6171019/reconstruction-black-economic-progress-history/">white violence at the polls</a> and continually lobbied his superiors in Washington to provide him with more troops and more authority to protect the freedmen. </p>
<p>Once a racist enslaver, he distinguished himself after the war in his active protection and promotion of the rights of formerly enslaved persons.</p>
<p>Thomas stands today as an example of the thousands of white Southerners who supported the Union during the Civil War and a rare example of a slave owner who changed his views on race and slavery. His military career demonstrated skill and bravery, but his true heroism was a moral one.</p>
<p>In my view, as the military assesses new names for bases formerly named after Confederate generals, Thomas’ name deserves consideration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205950/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Justin Einolf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Southerner, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas was a racist enslaver before the Civil War. But he fought for the Union because he prioritized his oath to defend the Constitution over state interests.Christopher Justin Einolf, Associate Professor of Sociology, Northern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2057292023-05-17T12:40:05Z2023-05-17T12:40:05ZSymbols of the Confederacy are slowly coming down from US military bases: 3 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526343/original/file-20230515-31204-oezcg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1094%2C107%2C4011%2C3291&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People pose next to a newly unveiled Fort Moore sign on May 11, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-pose-for-photos-next-to-a-newly-unveiled-fort-moore-news-photo/1253877603?adppopup=true">Cheney Orr/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Without much fanfare, <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3260434/dod-begins-implementing-naming-commission-recommendations/">a federal panel</a> is removing the names of Confederate generals from U.S. military bases and replacing them with names that exemplify modern-day values and patriotism.</p>
<p>Most recently, on May 11, 2023, the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/11/us/fort-benning-georgia-renamed-moore-reaj/index.html">U.S. Army base in Georgia</a> originally named after Confederate Brig. Gen. Henry Benning was renamed Fort Moore after both <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/182389/vietnam_war_hero_hal_moore_dies_at_age_94">Lt. Gen. Harold “Hal” Moore</a>, who served in Vietnam, and his wife, <a href="https://www.fortmoore.com/summa">Julia Moore</a>, who had been an advocate for military families and reformed the military’s death notice procedures.</p>
<p>In stark contrast to the Moores, Benning was a leader in the South’s secession movement and strongly defended slavery. </p>
<p>Over the years, The Conversation US has published numerous stories exploring the legacy of Confederate nostalgia, everything from national monuments to U.S. military bases. Here are selections from those articles. </p>
<h2>1. Reconsidering Confederate iconography</h2>
<p>For decades, nine U.S. Army bases have carried the names of men who fought against the United States and its Union army – in a war waged to defend and perpetuate the slavery of people of African descent.</p>
<p>These military installations, all in Southern states, were named to honor such figures as Gen. Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Confederate Army, and John Bell Hood, an associate of Lee’s known for being both brave and impetuous. </p>
<p>Until recently, the military installations honoring Confederate leaders received little scrutiny from the media. As a newspaper reporter four decades ago, <a href="https://robertson.vcu.edu/directory/south.html">Jeff South</a> gave the names a free pass. In 1981, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-moves-to-rename-army-bases-honoring-confederate-generals-who-fought-to-defend-slavery-183862">South wrote</a>, he covered the <a href="https://oa-bsa.org/history/1981-national-jamboree">Boy Scouts Jamboree</a> at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia without mentioning that the base was named for a <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/p-hill">man who had turned against the United States</a> and fought to defend slavery.</p>
<p>“In recent years, more Americans, including those living in the South, have reconsidered the use of Confederate iconography,” South wrote. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-moves-to-rename-army-bases-honoring-confederate-generals-who-fought-to-defend-slavery-183862">US moves to rename Army bases honoring Confederate generals who fought to defend slavery</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>2. Memorializing modern-day values</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://honors.tcu.edu/faculty/dr-frederick-w-gooding/">professor of pop culture history</a> who studies Black statues within mainstream society, Frederick Gooding Jr. wrote about America’s reckoning with its oppressive past.</p>
<p>“The nation (faces) the question of not just which statues and other images should be taken down,” Gooding <a href="https://theconversation.com/old-statues-of-confederate-generals-are-slowly-disappearing-will-monuments-honoring-people-of-color-replace-them-173625">explained</a>, “but what else – if anything – should be put up in their place.”</p>
<p>Gooding pointed out that the lack of Black statues, for example, is an overlooked barometer of racial progress and “sends a clear message of exclusion.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/old-statues-of-confederate-generals-are-slowly-disappearing-will-monuments-honoring-people-of-color-replace-them-173625">Old statues of Confederate generals are slowly disappearing – will monuments honoring people of color replace them?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. Memorials have expiration dates too?</h2>
<p><a href="https://education.uconn.edu/person/alan-marcus/">Alan Marcus</a> and <a href="https://history.uconn.edu/faculty-by-name/walter-woodward/">Walter Woodward</a> have been studying the role of Confederate monuments and other nostalgia in American memory. </p>
<p>“Historical monuments are intended to be timeless, but almost all have an expiration date,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/monuments-expire-but-offensive-monuments-can-become-powerful-history-lessons-143318">they wrote</a>. “As society’s values shift, the legitimacy of monuments can and often does erode.” </p>
<p>This is because monuments, including the names of U.S. military bases, reveal the values of the time in which they were created and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=A_xmDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=lies+across+america+loewen&ots=dvIDkQmqi5&sig=a8Jo_vADxErbjPGB0cdM8mqqbWg#v=onepage&q=lies%20across%20america%20loewen&f=false">advance the agendas of their creators</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/monuments-expire-but-offensive-monuments-can-become-powerful-history-lessons-143318">Monuments 'expire' – but offensive monuments can become powerful history lessons</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205729/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
One of the last relics of ‘lost cause’ ideology is being removed as a federal panel renames US military bases that honor Confederate generals.Howard Manly, Race + Equity Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1522962021-03-11T13:30:40Z2021-03-11T13:30:40ZTexas distorts its past – and Sam Houston’s legacy – to defend Confederate monuments<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383118/original/file-20210208-19-1mwgr2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C288%2C3264%2C2154&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Huntsville reveres hometown hero Sam Houston. And he did not revere the Confederacy. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/wDKFUy">Jimmy Henderson/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/presscenter/splc-reports-over-160-confederate-symbols-removed-2020On%20February%2023,%202021,%20%20(SPLC)%20in%20Montgomery,%20Alabama,%20%5Bannounced%20that">At least 160 Confederate symbols were removed</a> from public spaces across the United States in 2020, according to the the Southern Poverty Law Center. Even Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy, has removed a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from the Richmond Statehouse and is <a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-legal-hurdle-to-removing-confederate-statues-in-virginia-the-wishes-of-their-long-dead-white-donors-141156">trying to take down others</a> seen as offensive by an increasing numbers of Americans, including those whose ancestors were enslaved.</p>
<p>Texas has largely declined to participate in this nationwide reckoning with the symbols of the Old South. Instead, local officials are doubling down on their Confederate monuments.</p>
<p>Republican State Sen. Brandon Creighton, who represents the city of Conroe, near Houston, says he will <a href="https://thetexan.news/fight-over-historical-monument-removal-brewing-ahead-of-the-87th-legislative-session/">file a bill this legislative session</a> to protect historical monuments from efforts to remove them.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, officials in rural Walker County, Texas, <a href="https://www.itemonline.com/news/walker-county-commissioners-vote-to-keep-confederate-monument-at-courthouse/article_61850124-43c3-11eb-92e2-c3ec3ccaac42.html?fbclid=IwAR3sUR1s2JYRiv5r-oG0p6F_20OLdxyqR1ZZ8qJWLpBhodR8I0vN">voted unanimously</a> in December to keep a marker to “Confederate Patriots” on the county courthouse lawn in Huntsville. The vote followed an eight-month citizen campaign calling for the removal of the monument, which was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1956. </p>
<p>Walker County Commissioners explained their Dec. 21 decision only by saying that the monument “does not belong to us,” suggesting it is a piece of local history. </p>
<p>Yet Walker County is hundreds of miles from any major Civil War battlefield. And the county’s most famous resident, Sam Houston, a Texas hero, ardently opposed the Confederacy. </p>
<p>So rejecting the Confederacy is Texas history, too. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376920/original/file-20210103-57963-1farc1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Crowd of young people stands by Walker County's Confederate monument with signs saying, 'The South lost the war, get over it!'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376920/original/file-20210103-57963-1farc1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376920/original/file-20210103-57963-1farc1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376920/original/file-20210103-57963-1farc1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376920/original/file-20210103-57963-1farc1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376920/original/file-20210103-57963-1farc1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376920/original/file-20210103-57963-1farc1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376920/original/file-20210103-57963-1farc1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protest in Huntsville, Texas, calling to remove a Confederate marker at the Walker County Courthouse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Joseph Brown, The Huntsville Item</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A proud Southerner who opposed secession</h2>
<p>Sam Houston was the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sam_Houston/1bcICAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sam+houston&printsec=frontcover">most important political figure in Texas</a> before the Civil War. The modern city of Houston is named for him, as is the university in Huntsville, Texas, where we teach American history. </p>
<p>Born in Virginia, Houston moved to the Mexican state of Texas in 1832. A veteran of the War of 1812, Houston was soon appointed commander of the Texas Army and helped secure Texas’ independence at the 1836 <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/san-jacinto-battle-of">Battle of San Jacinto</a>. He went on to serve two nonconsecutive terms as president of the independent Republic of Texas. </p>
<p>Later, Houston was the state’s Democratic governor when secession became a serious subject of discussion in the South. </p>
<p>In 1860, following Abraham Lincoln’s election, white leaders in Huntsville wrote to Houston seeking his advice. Houston <a href="https://www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/presidents/houston2/sam_houston_nov14_1860.html">counseled them in a letter written on Nov. 14, 1860</a>, to remain vigilant in their defense of American constitutional values “when the country is agitated and revolution threatened.” He urged the group not to get “carried away by the impulse of the moment.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383104/original/file-20210208-23-bkys2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=112%2C61%2C6680%2C3513&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Faded, sepia-toned Texas flag" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383104/original/file-20210208-23-bkys2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=112%2C61%2C6680%2C3513&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383104/original/file-20210208-23-bkys2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383104/original/file-20210208-23-bkys2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383104/original/file-20210208-23-bkys2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383104/original/file-20210208-23-bkys2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383104/original/file-20210208-23-bkys2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383104/original/file-20210208-23-bkys2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Flag of the independent Republic of Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/texas-flag-royalty-free-image/140217095?adppopup=true&uiloc=thumbnail_similar_images_adp&uiloc=thumbnail_similar_images_adp">troyek/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There were natural bonds between Houston and Southern secessionists: All were white male slave owners who openly endorsed white supremacy. But Houston saw slavery as a necessary evil, not a patriotic cause. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2018.0073">It is necessity that produces slavery</a>,” he said in 1855, and “it is convenience, it is profit, that creates slavery.” </p>
<p>As a senator in 1854, he had <a href="https://www.senate.gov/reference/common/generic/Profiles_SH.htm">voted against the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories</a> and was condemned throughout the South for his principled stand. </p>
<p>Sam Houston was no abolitionist, however. He <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/antebellum-texas">owned more than a dozen enslaved people</a> and profited from enslaved labor throughout his life. Unlike much of America’s Southern gentry, though, Houston was not willing to shed blood to expand slavery. </p>
<p>When Texas legislators met in 1861 to consider seceding from the United States, Houston made clear his opposition to the move. But Texas secessionists were a stronger force. When Houston refused to take an oath to the Confederacy on March 16, 1861, he was removed from the governor’s office. </p>
<p>Booed by crowds and driven from state politics, Houston settled into a self-imposed exile in Huntsville. He watched in dismay as Texas <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/secession-convention">joined the Confederacy</a>. He died two years later, a lonesome and broken man.</p>
<h2>A contorted view of Texas history</h2>
<p>As scholars who focus on race and class in Texas, we have studied the state’s history and have been led to speak out against Huntsville’s Confederate monument. </p>
<p>As we wrote last year in a <a href="https://www.itemonline.com/news/university-history-professors-release-statement-on-confederate-monument/article_b9836edc-b2fb-11ea-b984-cb899727bd03.html">statement published in the local newspaper</a>, the Huntsville Item, the courthouse marker obscures and misrepresents local history. It is an insult to Houston’s refusal to pledge allegiance to the Confederacy and ignores the fact that <a href="http://studythepast.com/democracy/censusdata.htm">enslaved African Americans made up most of Walker County’s population</a> during the Civil War. </p>
<p>It is, in so many words, an ahistorical monument.</p>
<p>Yet Huntsville – population 40,000 – glorifies Houston as a military and political hero. His former home is surrounded by a <a href="http://www.samhoustonmemorialmuseum.com/">modern museum</a> dedicated to him. And Interstate 45, which runs from Houston to Dallas, features a <a href="https://www.huntsvilletexas.com/148/Statue-Visitor-Center">67-foot statue</a> known as “Big Sam” advertising Huntsville to travelers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383101/original/file-20210208-17-c9b6gi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Old white wooden building with simple architecture" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383101/original/file-20210208-17-c9b6gi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383101/original/file-20210208-17-c9b6gi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383101/original/file-20210208-17-c9b6gi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383101/original/file-20210208-17-c9b6gi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383101/original/file-20210208-17-c9b6gi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383101/original/file-20210208-17-c9b6gi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383101/original/file-20210208-17-c9b6gi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Woodland, Sam Houston’s historic home in Huntsville, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/report-confederate-monument-in-downtown-huntsville-vandalized/285-1db4e442-423d-42cd-b1fb-0cf5bfd6c861">Pma03/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How can modern Huntsvillians – like local officials across Texas – both revere this anti-Confederate leader and pledge their support for Confederate symbols? </p>
<p>The answer lies in the “<a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/10/25/16545362/southern-socialites-civil-war-history">Lost Cause</a>,” a tenacious Southern myth that portrays slavery as benign and the Confederacy as noble. This is the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/19/conservative-activists-texas-have-shaped-history-all-american-children-learn/">preferred version of Texas history promoted by the state’s conservative leadership</a>, the version that appears in Texas schools’ textbooks. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383124/original/file-20210208-21-1lplmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A giant white marble statue of a man with a cane, highway in the foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383124/original/file-20210208-21-1lplmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383124/original/file-20210208-21-1lplmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383124/original/file-20210208-21-1lplmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383124/original/file-20210208-21-1lplmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383124/original/file-20210208-21-1lplmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383124/original/file-20210208-21-1lplmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383124/original/file-20210208-21-1lplmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Big Sam,’ off I-45 outside Huntsville.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the 1950s, when the Huntsville chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected the courthouse monument, the group had <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/10/25/16545362/southern-socialites-civil-war-history">been pushing the Lost Cause narrative for over half a century</a>. </p>
<p>Mae Wynne McFarland, a native Huntsvillian and 1941 president of the Texas Daughters of the Confederacy, <a href="https://archon.shsu.edu/?p=collections/findingaid&id=92&q=">characterized the “War Between the States”</a> as a conflict “fought for exactly the same principles which inspired the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Texas Revolution.” </p>
<p>Houston fought in two of those three battles. His repeated public statements show, however, that he did not believe the Confederacy’s effort in the Civil War aimed at the “same principles” as the War of 1812 or the Texas Revolution. </p>
<p>Conservative white Texans have long tried to knit Sam Houston into their Lost Cause narrative. But biographers and students of history have always been there to correct them. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey L. Littlejohn has publicly advocated for the removal of Walker County's Confederate monument.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron David Hyams has publicly advocated for the removal of Walker County's Confederate monument.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristin Henze has publicly advocated for the removal of Walker County's Confederate monument.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zachary Montz has publicly advocated for the removal of Walker County's Confederate monument.</span></em></p>Texas’ most famous statesman, Sam Houston, was a slave owner who opposed the Confederacy. But white Texans tend to omit his dissent in current debates over removing Confederate markers.Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Professor of History, Sam Houston State UniversityAaron David Hyams, Visiting Assistant Professor, Sam Houston State UniversityKristin Henze, Lecturer, History Department, Sam Houston State UniversityZachary Montz, Lecturer, History Department, Sam Houston State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1434052020-08-17T12:23:46Z2020-08-17T12:23:46ZHit ’em where it hurts – how economic threats are a potent tool for changing people’s minds about the Confederate flag<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352554/original/file-20200812-18-11jt3se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C16%2C3589%2C2376&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Mississippi state flag, with a representation of the Confederate battle flag, is raised one last time over the state Capitol building on July 1, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Racial-Injustice-Confederate-Flag-Mississippi/87de408c0f404e8bb390b32c84d63636/49/0">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Activists nationwide have resumed demanding the removal of statues and symbols that are considered racially offensive – such as of slave owners, Confederate leaders and the Confederate flag.</p>
<p>The requests – and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-24/the-confederate-flag-has-cost-south-carolina-millions-in-tourism-thanks-to-naacp-boycott">related boycotts</a> and threats of other <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2020/06/23/top-ceo-people-will-boycott-mississippi-products-if-lawmakers-put-state-flag-on-ballot/">economic protests</a> – have been part of the national controversy about racism in American life and have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/politics/trump-bubba-wallace-nascar.html">sparked questions</a> about how to recognize traumatic elements of U.S. history.</p>
<p>Typically, the debate about the role of Confederate imagery in public life is seen as a political, social or racial issue. But in recent research, we discovered that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1065912919899725">economic concerns could be effective</a> in shifting Southerners’ attitudes about Confederate symbols. </p>
<p>Public officials and individual citizens alike are more likely to oppose the presence of Confederate symbols when they learn it may be bad for local business.</p>
<h2>Longstanding support</h2>
<p>Decisions to <a href="https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments">build Confederate monuments</a> or display the Confederate battle flag were not, of course, controversial among white Southerners. Even recently, it wasn’t common for many white Americans – either in public service or as private citizens – to actively support removing Confederate imagery.</p>
<p>Yet some organizations have long opposed Confederate symbols. For instance, the NAACP called an <a href="https://www.naacp.org/latest/naacp-ends-boycott-of-south-carolina/">economic boycott of South Carolina</a> from 2000 to 2015 because the <a href="https://time.com/3930464/south-carolina-confederate-flag-1962/">Confederate battle flag flew over the State House</a> in Columbia, alongside the state and U.S. flags.</p>
<p>As recently as 2011 a plurality of white Southerners <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/04/08/civil-war-at-150-still-relevant-still-divisive/">saw the Confederate flag as more positive than negative</a>. </p>
<p>Political elites were not much different: In 2000, when South Carolina hosted a debate during the Republican presidential primaries, both George W. Bush and John McCain initially supported leaving decisions up to state officials about whether to keep the Confederate flag flying, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/20/us/after-campaigning-on-candor-mccain-admits-he-lacked-it-on-confederate-flag-issue.html">though McCain equivocated on the issue throughout the campaign</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman takes a Confederate flag off a public display." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests against public displays of the Confederate flag, including this one from Bree Newsome in North Carolina in 2015, have led to the flag’s removal from many venues.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Black-Women-Activism/e45035c175394e1e9764a596e299004f/404/0">AP Photo/Bruce Smith</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A rapid change</h2>
<p>Opposition to public display of Confederate symbols has shifted in more recent years.</p>
<p>In some cases, public officials have encountered changing political circumstances. In 2015, for instance, South Carolina <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/22/us/Transcript-Gov-Nikki-R-Haley-of-South-Carolina-Addresses-Removing-the-Confederate-Battle-Flag.html">Gov. Nikki Haley supported a bipartisan call</a> to remove the flag from the State House in the wake of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/look-for-the-patterns-in-charleston-43593">racially motivated mass shooting</a> of African Americans at a Charleston church.</p>
<p>Our research found that presenting divisive social and political issues in terms of their potential economic consequences can change the views of both political elites and the public at large.</p>
<p>This came up, for instance, during a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/heres-how-black-power-finally-prevailed-in-mississippi-state-flag-fight">legislative debate in Mississippi</a> in June 2020. Some of the people arguing that the Confederate flag should not be part of the state flag said that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/28/mississippi-legislators-expected-debate-removal-confederate-icon-state-flag/">keeping it might impede job creation</a> and economic development in their state. </p>
<p>Those tactics are similar to economic arguments from other groups seeking social change, such as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/28/how-lgbt-activists-beat-back-unfriendly-laws-emphasize-economics-not-just-equality/">LGBT-rights advocates</a> explaining how the business community would be hurt by continued discrimination.</p>
<h2>What’s the effect?</h2>
<p>In our research, we surveyed voters as well as elected officials at both city and county levels. We wanted to measure whether, and how much, economic interests might affect Southerners’ attitudes toward the presence of Confederate symbols. We randomly assigned the participants into one of three equal-sized groups.</p>
<p>The first group read a vignette asking them to imagine that a Confederate flag was displayed on local government property in their county, and then asked them, on a scale from 1 to 7, how likely they were to support removal of the flag.</p>
<p>The second group was given the same basic information as the first group, but with additional language indicating that the continued presence of Confederate flag on public property in their county would mean a major multinational company would not want to relocate to the community.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The last group was given the same information as the second group, but with an additional assertion that the continued presence of the flag would have an effect large enough to affect the stock market in a way that would hurt the respondents’ personal economic bottom line.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A truck carrying a Confederate battle flag is parked next to a Confederate statue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When told their local economies might be hurt by continued display of Confederate flags, Southerners were more likely to support removing them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/South-Carolina-Daily-Life/30b7111dc5dd459c80024884a8c382dc/266/0">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We found that Southerners were far more likely to support removal of Confederate symbols from public property when told there would be economic harm if they stayed up. Both voters and elected officials became about a half-point more likely on our seven-point scale to support removal after receiving information about the economic threats associated with the continued presence of the Confederate flag.</p>
<p>Controversies around socially and racially divisive monuments and symbols are likely to continue in the U.S. Our findings indicate that social movements might change more people’s minds by emphasizing not only the history of Southern racial injustice, but also by using the potent threats of boycotts and other forms of economic pressure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143405/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Public officials and individual citizens alike are more likely to oppose the presence of Confederate symbols when informed it may be bad for local business.Jordan Carr Peterson, Assistant Professor of Political Science, North Carolina State UniversityChristian Grose, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1423272020-08-11T12:10:01Z2020-08-11T12:10:01ZAfrican Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351663/original/file-20200806-18-1phy7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=65%2C16%2C2609%2C1781&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters at the Richmond, Virginia monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee on June 18, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-against-police-violence-and-racism-continue-to-news-photo/1221109212?adppopup=true">Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From Richmond to New York City to Seattle, anti-racist activists are getting results as Confederate monuments are <a href="https://hgreen.people.ua.edu/csa-monument-mapping-project.html">coming down</a> by the dozens.</p>
<p>In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. </p>
<p>It’s now a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/style/statue-richmond-lee.html">new community space</a> where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that <a href="http://www.blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a>. </p>
<p>This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m a historian of celebrations and protests after the Civil War. And in my <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/4113/discussions/157750/register-kentucky-historical-society-vol-115-no-1-now-available">research</a>, I have found that long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history. </p>
<p>But those African American memorial cultures have often been overshadowed by Confederate monuments that dominate public space and set in stone a white supremacist story of the past.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sketch of the ‘Colored National Convention’ in Tennessee, 1876.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sketch-of-the-colored-national-convention-in-tennessee-1876-news-photo/657153622?adppopup=true">From the New York Public Library/Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Black celebrations</h2>
<p>In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans had <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/protesters-denounce-abraham-lincoln-statue-in-dc-urge-removal-of-emancipation-memorial/2020/06/25/02646910-b704-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html">less power and money</a> than whites did to erect statues to celebrate their past. </p>
<p>Instead, they challenged white dominance of public space using <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/emancipation-day">holidays</a>, <a href="https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/13704/barkleybrown_negotiatingandtransforming.pdf;jsessionid=DD208F1EE358CB9A7B81FAD9BB7A0D42?sequence=1">parades</a>, <a href="https://coloredconventions.org/about-conventions/">conventions</a>, mass meetings and other events. Black people used public celebrations such as <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/historical-legacy-juneteenth">Juneteenth</a> to tell a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0JWdKmh64XgC&printsec=frontcover">positive story</a> about their history, debate and set political goals for the community, applaud the role of Black soldiers and workers, and create a legacy and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/history-and-memory-in-african-american-culture-9780195083972?q=fabre&lang=en&cc=us">cultural identity</a> for Black men, women and children. </p>
<p>These community celebrations helped guide Black protests and organizing after the Civil War and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/06/19/heres-what-juneteenth-looks-like-in-2020-photos/#2becddaf4199">continue to inspire activists today</a>. </p>
<p>Here are just a few of the ways African Americans challenged white dominance in public spaces:</p>
<p>• On July 4, 1866, Black people <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Defining_Moments/e8M8fnMcwyUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=kathleen+clark+%22liberty+which+no+white+man+ever+yet+presumed+to+take+with+Virginia%E2%80%99s+great+work+of+art%22&pg=PA52&printsec=frontcover">gathered</a> in Richmond’s Capitol Square and decorated the statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and George Mason with garlands and flags – a radical act that a reporter from the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84024738/">Richmond Dispatch</a> fumed was “a liberty which no white man ever yet presumed to take with Virginia’s great work of art.” By claiming the Founding Fathers as their own, African Americans protested against their exclusion from public space and citizenship. </p>
<p>• In 1867 Black men and women publicly assembled at a convention in Lexington, Kentucky, where political leader William F. Butler <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6NC-Yu-AHzgC&pg=PA47#v=onepage&q&f=false">stated</a>, “First we ha[d] the cartridge box, now we want the ballot box, and soon we will get the jury box. I don’t mean with our fists, but by standing up and demanding our rights.” Butler argued that Black men fought to maintain the Union, “but we were left without means of protecting ourselves….We need and must have the ballot box for that purpose.” </p>
<p>• A Baltimore procession in May 1870 celebrated the ratification of the <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/15th-amendment">Fifteenth Amendment</a>, which guaranteed Black men the right to vote. The event had more than 12,000 participants and 20,000 spectators. Newspapers called the procession <a href="https://msa.maryland.gov/dtroy/project/newspapers/american/">“vast and magnificent in its appointments, gorgeous in its decorations, and noble in its purposes.”</a> Participants carried banners reading, “Give us equal rights and we will protect ourselves,” and “Equity and justice goes hand in hand.” </p>
<p>These and other African American celebrations asserted their right to public spaces where previously enslaved people might have needed <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/slave-codes">passes</a> or were supposed to be invisible. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The central part of this image, called ‘The Fifteenth Amendment,’ depicts the grand parade held in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 19, 1870.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/tr22a.html#obj11">Thomas Kelly after James C. Beard/Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Monuments and power</h2>
<p>For both Black and white residents, the actions they took to commemorate their cultures demonstrated the importance of residential and commercial spaces, such as city parks, neighborhoods and shopping districts, and especially official civic spaces such as city halls or courthouses. </p>
<p>White organizations raised hundreds of statues in public spaces, especially in the South, during the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy">height of Confederate memorializing</a> in the Jim Crow and civil rights eras.</p>
<p>White supremacist groups such as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/16/the-whole-point-of-confederate-monuments-is-to-celebrate-white-supremacy/">United Daughters of the Confederacy</a> erected these Confederate monuments to, in their words, <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009583001">“correct history”</a> by celebrating the <a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/lost_cause_the#start_entry">Lost Cause</a>, the idea that slavery was a benevolent institution and the Confederate cause was just. </p>
<p>These monuments represented a way to remind African Americans that <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/how-charlottesvilles-confederate-statues-helped-decimate-the-citys-historically-successful-black-communities.html">public spaces, public commemoration and public advancement</a> were not for them. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/29/why-bree-newsome-took-down-the-confederate-flag-in-s-c-i-refuse-to-be-ruled-by-fear/">And while protests</a> that Confederate flags and monuments do not belong in public spaces have grown stronger since <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/878828088/5-years-after-charleston-church-massacre-what-have-we-learned">2015</a>, resistance is not new. African Americans have been protesting against Confederate monuments since they were erected. </p>
<p>In Charleston, South Carolina, Black citizens in the 1880s and 1890s mocked and defaced the original monument to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-C-Calhoun">John C. Calhoun</a>, a South Carolina congressman and U.S. vice president, who defended slavery as a “positive good.” </p>
<p>Teacher and civil rights activist <a href="https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w68p67zx">Mamie Garvin Fields</a> remembered that as a child it seemed as if Calhoun’s statue was “looking you in the face and telling you … I am back to see you stay in your place.” She recalled bringing something to <a href="https://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org/places/the-south-carolina-monument-that-symbolizes-clashing-memories-of-slavery/">“scratch up the coat, break the watch chain, try to knock off the nose”</a> – perhaps leading to its replacement in 1896 with a much taller monument. </p>
<p>In 1923 the United Daughters of the Confederacy urged Congress to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/opinion/sunday/confederate-monuments-mammy.html">fund a monument</a> “to the faithful slave mammies of the South” in Washington, D.C. The National Association of Colored Women mobilized several Black activist organizations in letter-writing campaigns, petitions and editorials and crushed the plan. The monument was never built.</p>
<h2>Turning away</h2>
<p>White residents had the power to ignore Black residents’ commemorative activities. </p>
<p>Rather than watch the festivities or listen to Black speakers, they chose to leave town for the day, stay inside or express disgust among themselves. White people in Richmond celebrated the Fourth of July in the countryside, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=hGE3CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=partly+to+enjoy+the+days+relaxation+from+business+and+partly+to+avoid+the+spectacle+which+they+could+not+have+avoided+witnessing+had+they+remained+at+home.&source=bl&ots=gvRTZzZnH9&sig=ACfU3U15UP1QzeTLZvGcgxKj44Rq61ZsFw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiSwe_s2bHqAhUFXc0KHcrDCvMQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=partly%20to%20enjoy%20the%20days%20relaxation%20from%20business%20and%20partly%20to%20avoid%20the%20spectacle%20which%20they%20could%20not%20have%20avoided%20witnessing%20had%20they%20remained%20at%20home.&f=false">noted the Richmond Dispatch newspaper</a>, “partly to enjoy the day’s relaxation from business and partly to avoid the spectacle which they could not have avoided witnessing had they remained at home.” </p>
<p>The Baltimore American newspaper noted that those who were too “thin-skinned” to see Black residents celebrating the Fifteenth Amendment shut their doors, “presenting the appearance that ‘nobody was in.’” White residents <a href="https://msa.maryland.gov/dtroy/project/newspapers/american/">“refused to witness the procession, declaring they could not gaze upon such a humiliating scene.”</a> </p>
<h2>Remaking public space</h2>
<p>In 2017, white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 11-12 for the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/14/543471538/charlottesville-rally-aimed-to-defend-a-confederate-statue-it-may-have-doomed-ot">Unite the Right rally</a>, ostensibly to protect a monument of Robert E. Lee. </p>
<p>It was a battle over what vision of America would prevail in public space in the 21st century. </p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p>
<p>Chanting “White lives matter” and “Jews will not replace us,” the white supremacists violently attacked counterprotesters. </p>
<p>Today, the tables are turned. Anti-racism protesters are transforming public space by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/us/richmond-jefferson-davis-statue-pulled-down-trnd/index.html">tearing down</a> Confederate monuments or demanding their removal. Years of activism combined with these same types of activities – mourning, celebration of Black pasts, public demands for the future, politics in the streets – have led to the removal of many Confederate monuments, despite the violence and fury of white supremacists. </p>
<p>Activists are telling a <a href="https://www.vmfa.museum/about/rumors-of-war/">new story</a> of African American history out of the relics of a white supremacist past, just as they did in public celebrations in the 19th century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon M. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Protests of Confederate flags and monuments have grown since 2015, but resistance is not new. African Americans have been protesting against Confederate monuments since they were erected.Shannon M. Smith, Associate Professor of History, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1408132020-06-17T22:36:05Z2020-06-17T22:36:05ZDead white men get their say in court as Virginia tries to remove Robert E. Lee statues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342465/original/file-20200617-94054-o22ozd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C147%2C5111%2C3374&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Richmond's towering Robert E. Lee statue is transformed by protests following the killing of George Floyd. Is removal next?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-image-of-george-floyd-along-with-the-black-lives-matter-news-photo/1219836149?adppopup=true">John McDonnell/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The latest chapter in the United States’ ongoing debate about Confederate monuments involves some unexpected opinions: those of long-dead land donors.</p>
<p>Responding to <a href="https://www.citylab.com/design/2020/06/confederate-monuments-statues-richmond-virginia-protests/612691/">sustained, nationwide protests over police brutality</a>, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on June 4 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/northam-to-remove-lee-statue/2020/06/04/0b2c013c-a603-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html">vowed to dismantle</a> a prominent statue of the Virginia-born Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, the state capital.</p>
<p>That plan was put on pause just four days later when a state judge issued <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/09/872707016/virginia-judge-blocks-plan-to-remove-statue-of-robert-e-lee">an injunction</a> based on the petition of a man whose ancestor, Otway Allen, gave Virginia the land the the sculpture sits on.</p>
<p>In his petition to the court, William C. Gregory claimed that removal of the statue would violate the conditions of his great-grandfather’s <a href="http://virginiamemory.com/transcribe/scripto/transcribe/4096/14116">1890 land deed</a>, which says Virginia “will hold said Statue and pedestal and Circle of ground perpetually sacred to the Monumental purpose … and that she will faithfully guard it and affectionately protect it.”</p>
<p>On June 19, a judge will decide whether to let the 10-day injunction expire, enabling Richmond to dismantle its Lee monument, or to obey the donor’s wishes – at least temporarily. </p>
<p>Richmond isn’t the only Virginia city where a centuries-old land deed is a legal hurdle in removing Confederate monuments many see as a symbol of white supremacy. Nearby Charlottesville has <a href="https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/charlottesville-seeks-lawsuit-s-dismissal-so-it-can-move-forward-with-lee-statue-sale/article_eb002250-2471-11e7-865c-77334390b7a1.html">faced similar questions</a> about the intentions of the philanthropist who donated its controversial Robert E. Lee statue.</p>
<h2>‘Irreparable harm’</h2>
<p>Richmond’s Lee sculpture sits atop a pedestal on a traffic circle at the gateway to Monument Avenue, an architectural paean to white Richmonders’ long tradition of gracious, segregated living. </p>
<p>The land <a href="https://www.newsleader.com/story/news/history/2017/08/24/lee-monument-richmond-celebrated-confederacys-deathless-dead/596700001/">was a gift</a> to the state from real estate investor Otway S. Allen and his sisters, Bettie F. Allen Gregory and Martha Allen Wilson. The donors hoped that putting the monument on the tree-lined boulevard would hasten development of the <a href="https://www.livingplaces.com/VA/Independent_Cities/Richmond_City/Monument_Avenue_Historic_District.html">prestigious</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/its-not-just-the-monuments/612940/?fbclid=IwAR0jH2-A3U-nHG5TbQuV-Z3zbgLTN1gTEUc4lL8w87c9oBCG2AupcRgZ1Zk">whites-only</a> residential neighborhood planned for the area. </p>
<p>Back in the 19th century, the Lee monument was on the outskirts of the city. Over the next 40 years, four more Confederate monuments were erected along the avenue, which traverses what is now central Richmond.</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Lee-complaint.pdf">injunction request</a>, Gregory claimed that removing the statue would cause “irreparable harm” because his family “has taken pride for 130 years in this statue resting upon land belonging to his family.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342467/original/file-20200617-94060-h0m99e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342467/original/file-20200617-94060-h0m99e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342467/original/file-20200617-94060-h0m99e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342467/original/file-20200617-94060-h0m99e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342467/original/file-20200617-94060-h0m99e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342467/original/file-20200617-94060-h0m99e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342467/original/file-20200617-94060-h0m99e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342467/original/file-20200617-94060-h0m99e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Richmond postcard from the early 20th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/rBwunh">VCU Library Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To many locals, especially black Richmond residents, the sculptures have always been <a href="https://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/is-monument-avenue-set-in-stone/Content?oid=2909428">colossal reminders of the South’s</a> history of enslavement and the violence wrought on black lives. The governor and city leaders <a href="https://www.richmond.com/news/local/updated-richmond-leaders-want-confederate-monuments-removed-a-small-town-mayor-was-ready-to-take/article_a0583665-36f9-5e15-8c81-1fe18c8cfd20.html">now seemingly agree</a>, saying that monuments glorifying the region’s white supremacist history should not displayed on public land.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the Lee statue still has its <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/along-historic-richmond-street-residents-grapple-with-confederate-legacy/2020/06/12/86944d42-aaa5-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html">defenders in Richmond</a>. On June 15, six Monument Avenue homeowners <a href="https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/six-monument-avenue-residents-sue-to-stop-lee-statues-removal/article_cf0be699-55d0-56df-9fa6-8ac9039e32ea.html">filed their own separate lawsuit</a> to block its removal, claiming that dismantling the “priceless work of art” would lead to the “degradation of the internationally recognized avenue on which they reside.”</p>
<h2>Charlottesville’s ‘princely giver’</h2>
<p>An hour away in Charlottesville, another Robert E. Lee statue has been embroiled in legal challenges since 2017, when a <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-a-step-in-our-long-arc-toward-justice-82880">city council vote for its removal</a> triggered a deadly white supremacist rally.</p>
<p>Charlottesville’s statue was a gift of a <a href="https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/what-did-mcintire-really-want/article_20040940-bbce-5e87-9cc5-c425e98c5f2f.html">prominent local philanthropist</a>, Paul Goodloe McIntire. McIntire, born during the Civil War, was the son of the Charlottesville’s mayor when the city surrendered to General Custer’s Union troops in 1865. </p>
<p>McIntire made his money on the stock exchanges in Chicago and New York before returning to Charlottesville, a <a href="https://www.c-ville.com/paul-goodloe-mcintire-goodwill-men/">city shaped by his philanthropy</a>. Funding Charlottesville’s first library and building an amphitheater for the University of Virginia, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=WBz3LgKePpQC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=McIntire+princely+giver+of+gifts&source=bl&ots=9smhE-zJER&sig=ACfU3U3z7FYE6W6wzif0T5eF5hMwwIF_PQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiC-szP6IbqAhVdSTABHVzyBbAQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=McIntire%20princely%20giver%20of%20gifts&f=false">McIntire earned the sobriquet</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/08/10/charlottesvilles-confederate-statues-still-stand-still-symbolize-racist-past/">“princely giver” of gifts</a>. </p>
<p>In 1918 McIntire <a href="http://www.c-ville.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Monument-Fund-v.-City-of-Charlottesville-complaint-2017.pdf">donated land</a> to the city for use as a public park, to be called Lee Park. The deed stipulated that <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/395627/robert-e-lee-confederate-monument-charlottesville/">a sculpture of the Confederate general</a>, commissioned and paid for by McIntire, would be installed and maintained. </p>
<p>Among <a href="https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/charlottesville-seeks-lawsuit-s-dismissal-so-it-can-move-forward-with-lee-statue-sale/article_eb002250-2471-11e7-865c-77334390b7a1.html">other objections to the statue’s removal</a>, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Monument Fund and a small group of local citizens cited this land deed in their successful <a href="http://www.c-ville.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Monument-Fund-v.-City-of-Charlottesville-complaint-2017.pdf">March 2017 legal complaint</a>. They claimed that removing the statue would violate the terms and conditions of McIntire’s gift.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342468/original/file-20200617-94078-szdx4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342468/original/file-20200617-94078-szdx4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342468/original/file-20200617-94078-szdx4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342468/original/file-20200617-94078-szdx4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342468/original/file-20200617-94078-szdx4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342468/original/file-20200617-94078-szdx4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342468/original/file-20200617-94078-szdx4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342468/original/file-20200617-94078-szdx4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Since 2017 Charlottesville’s contested Lee statue has been alternately shrouded in black, barricaded and given police protection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/member-of-the-virginia-state-police-waits-outside-the-park-news-photo/1015049006?adppopup=true">Win McNamee/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Courts side with progress</h2>
<p>Both Virginia lawsuits argue that the land donors’ original wishes are inviolable. </p>
<p>But my <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3202660">legal research</a> on <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2680466">charitable gifts</a> shows that donor wishes are not always set in stone, so to speak. Under state law, Virginia’s included, courts can <a href="https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title64.2/chapter7/section64.2-731/">modify gift conditions</a> when fulfilling them is no longer possible or practicable.</p>
<p>Gifts with problematic racial restrictions and segregationist intentions have troubled many American institutions, from <a href="https://casetext.com/case/colin-mck-grant-home-v-medlock">nursing homes</a> established by donors to benefit elderly, white Presbyterians to <a href="https://casetext.com/case/tinnin-v-first-united-bank-of-miss">church scholarships mandated to fund white students only</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342469/original/file-20200617-94040-yovldl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342469/original/file-20200617-94040-yovldl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342469/original/file-20200617-94040-yovldl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342469/original/file-20200617-94040-yovldl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342469/original/file-20200617-94040-yovldl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342469/original/file-20200617-94040-yovldl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342469/original/file-20200617-94040-yovldl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342469/original/file-20200617-94040-yovldl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richmond’s graffiti-covered Lee statue, June 13, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-visit-the-graffiti-covered-statue-of-confederate-news-photo/1249586748?adppopup=true">Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In such cases, judges have declined to preserve the outdated wishes of long-dead donors. Instead, they’ve allowed discriminatory gift conditions to be eliminated, rendering the gifts usable in the modern era.</p>
<p>Rice University, for example, was founded in 1912 with a <a href="https://www.law.uh.edu/ihelg/monograph/11-08.pdf">charitable bequest</a> on the condition that the school educate only “the white inhabitants of Houston, and the state of Texas.” In 1963, seeking to integrate the university, Rice trustees filed a motion to modify the racial restrictions. </p>
<p>Despite opposition by a group of alumni who sought to keep the school segregated, the court concluded that strict adherence to the donor’s racial restrictions was no longer practicable and that the terms of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=921901346000076013&q=coffee+v.+rice+university&hl=en&as_sdt=6,47&as_vis=1">Rice’s charter could be modified</a> to admit black students.</p>
<p>Now, a Richmond court must tackle a similar issue. The ruling will determine whether land given to Richmond by a private citizen making a very public statement about the South’s legacy of racial inequality can be used to <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/06/cookout-at-confederate-statue-monument-richmond-virginia">celebrate new and different histories</a>. </p>
<p>What happens in this former capital of the Confederacy may influence similar cases in Charlottesville and beyond. </p>
<p><em>This story has been updated to reflect latest developments. You can find the updated version <a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-legal-hurdle-to-removing-confederate-statues-in-virginia-the-wishes-of-their-long-dead-white-donors-141156">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140813/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allison Anna Tait does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On June 19, a court will decide whether Virginia must obey a 1890 deed that gave the state a plot of prime Richmond land as long as it would ‘faithfully guard’ the Robert E. Lee statue erected there.Allison Anna Tait, Professor of Law, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1285032019-12-19T13:52:28Z2019-12-19T13:52:28ZConfederate Christmas ornaments are smaller than statues – but they send the same racist message<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307509/original/file-20191217-58302-hef1w6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C3435%2C2297&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Decorated with ornaments purchased, created and inherited for years, even generations, Christmas trees are a reflection of a family's history and tastes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/7j8ZcZ">John Morgan/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Christmas approaches, many families undertake a familiar ritual: an annual sojourn to the attic, basement or closet to pull out a box of treasured ornaments bought, created and collected over years, even generations. </p>
<p>Hanging these ornaments on the tree is an opportunity to reconnect with memories of personal milestones, holiday icons and, in many cases, destinations visited. </p>
<p>But, I argue, it may be time to take some of these old travel keepsakes off the tree. </p>
<p>In researching my 2019 book, “<a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2869-8.html">Confederate Exceptionalism</a>,” I studied sites throughout the American South whose <a href="https://theconversation.com/slave-lifes-harsh-realities-are-erased-in-christmas-tours-of-southern-plantations-125042">histories are tied to enslaved labor</a>. Seemingly charming souvenirs are sold to commemorate many of these places – from the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, to Stone Mountain, a Georgia cliffside carved with images of Confederate generals.</p>
<p>Christmas ornaments are among them. And while these keepsakes may seem apolitical, their very circulation enables Confederate myths and symbols to become “normal” features of people’s daily lives. My research suggests they can thus desensitize Americans to the destructive nature of such stories and icons. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The front and back of a Christmas ornament commemorating Georgia’s Stone Mountain, the ‘Mt. Rushmore of the Confederacy,’ screengrab Dec. 17, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.zazzle.com/stone_mountain_atlanta_georgia_ornaments-175760156339078337?rf=238840279726397180&tc=EAIaIQobChMIhvGY5pe95gIVWNyGCh1JOwU7EAQYASABEgJ3RfD_BwE&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=us_shopping&utm_term=z175760156339078337&ca_chid=2001810&ca_source=gaw&ca_ace=&ca_nw=g&ca_dev=c&ca_pl=&ca_pos=1o1&ca_cid=381150128120&ca_agid=77529482133&ca_caid=6483100273&ca_adid=381150128120&ca_kwt=&ca_mt=&ca_fid=&ca_tid=pla-542343087558&ca_lp=9004354&ca_li=1015519&ca_devm=&ca_plt=&gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhvGY5pe95gIVWNyGCh1JOwU7EAQYASABEgJ3RfD_BwE">www.zazzle.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Contesting Confederate symbols</h2>
<p>In recent years the U.S. has seen heated conversations about public symbols that commemorate the Confederacy, centered on the Confederate battle flag and statues of Confederate generals. </p>
<p>After a white shooter’s <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/charleston-church-massacre-2015/">deadly 2015 massacre of nine black congregants at Emanuel AME Church</a> in Charleston, South Carolina, activist Bree Newsome scaled the flagpole outside the state capitol to <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/6/27/15880052/bree-newsome-south-carolinas-confederate-flag">remove the Confederate flag flying there</a>. </p>
<p>After Newsome’s act of civil resistance, then-President Barack Obama referred to the Confederate battle flag as “<a href="https://gawker.com/obama-on-confederate-flag-a-reminder-of-systemic-oppr-1714239113">a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation</a>.” But some <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/why-conservatives-love-defending-the-confederate-flag.html">in the U.S.</a> and <a href="http://theconversation.com/brazils-long-strange-love-affair-with-the-confederacy-ignites-racial-tension-115548">even abroad</a> still see the flag as a symbol of “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred">heritage not hate</a>.”</p>
<p>Statues of Confederate generals that dot courthouse lawns and public plazas across the United States have prompted similar controversy. In 2017 plans to remove a Robert E. Lee statue triggered violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a white supremacist at the <a href="https://time.com/charlottesville-white-nationalist-rally-clashes/">“Unite the Right” rally</a> killed activist counter-protester Heather Heyer.</p>
<p>That tragedy spurred more cities, towns and colleges to <a href="https://theconversation.com/tearing-down-confederate-statues-leaves-structural-racism-intact-101951">remove or relocate Confederate statues</a> seen as offensive. Nationwide debates followed on how best to grapple appropriately with this <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-confederate-statue-graveyard-could-help-bury-the-old-south-118034">chapter of American history</a>. </p>
<h2>Consuming the Confederacy</h2>
<p>Beyond the scope of these national discussions, my <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2869-8.html">research on Confederate myths and memory</a> finds, many unexamined Confederate symbols have made their way into people’s kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms. </p>
<p>Take “Confederate cookbooks” that help modern-day chefs recreate the recipes of the Old South and stuffed animals based on Little Sorrel, the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-skin-of-little-sorrel-lexington-virginia">taxidermied war horse of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson</a>, for example.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Little Sorrell was the favored war horse of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/oeZBsc">Internet Archive Book Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People probably don’t reflect on the horrors of slavery when baking an apple pie or purchasing a cuddly toy for their child. They aren’t meant to. But they are <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820331690/dixie-emporium/">participating in that history and its mythologies</a> nonetheless.</p>
<p>In that way, seemingly apolitical objects like cookbooks, toys and Christmas ornaments commemorating Confederate history serve to normalize – rather than problematize – the objects, rituals and stories surrounding the Confederacy.</p>
<h2>More than a souvenir</h2>
<p>As a result, tree ornaments depicting the White House of the Confederacy, a <a href="https://www.stratfordhall.org/">home of Gen. Robert E. Lee</a> or the carvings of Stone Mountain are not simply mementos of a leisurely visit. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=707&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=707&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=707&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A decorative ornament on sale at the White House of the Confederacy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://acwm.org/product/white-house-ornament">American Civil War Museum</a></span>
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<p>These places and people are also icons of the “<a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/lost_cause_the">Lost Cause</a>,” an ideology that romanticizes the Confederacy by portraying the American Civil War as a battle of “states’ rights” rather than a fight to preserve slavery. </p>
<p>The Lost Cause is <a href="https://www.jacksonville.com/news/national/2017-08-22/how-civil-war-taught-school-depends-where-you-live">still taught in some Southern schools</a>, demonstrating that the vestiges of the Confederacy are powerful and lasting. Like Confederate statues and flags, Confederate Christmas ornaments strengthen this myth that the Confederacy – an entity built on white supremacy – was about southern “heritage.”</p>
<p>What appears to be a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0160738390900856">nostalgic trip reminder</a>, then, is in fact deeply implicated in a complex matrix of memory, history and racism in the United States. It’s just packaged in a seemingly benign way.</p>
<p>Christmas ornaments communicate something about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10510970109388553?needAccess=true">the person or family that displays them</a>. They reveal their history, passions and aesthetic taste. </p>
<p>So pause to consider whether your Christmas tree represents your values. Does a keepsake from Stone Mountain really belong between an ornament crafted in a kindergarten classroom and a glass nutcracker gifted by your grandmother? </p>
<p>[ <em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128503/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Maurantonio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Take a good look at those old Christmas ornaments before hanging them on the tree – you may find it’s time to retire some family keepsakes.Nicole Maurantonio, Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Communication Studies and American Studies, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1180342019-07-26T13:03:40Z2019-07-26T13:03:40ZA Confederate statue graveyard could help bury the Old South<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285786/original/file-20190726-43136-xpbabp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A damaged Confederate statue lies on a pallet in a warehouse in Durham, N.C. on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017, after protesters yanked it off its pedestal in front of a government building. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Confederate-Monument-Protest-Statue-Toppled/15d7476fae6e4d1d887d525278683db8/81/0">AP Photo/Allen Breed</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An estimated <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy">114 Confederate symbols</a> have been removed from public view since 2015. In many cases, these cast-iron Robert E. Lees and Jefferson Davises were <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/08/05/633952187/where-do-confederate-monuments-go-after-they-come-down">sent to storage</a>.</p>
<p>If the aim of statue removal is to build a more racially just South, then, as many analysts have <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-taking-down-confederate-memorials-is-only-a-first-step-78020">pointed out</a>, putting these monuments in storage is a lost opportunity. Simply unseating Confederate statues from highly visible public spaces is just the first step in a much longer process of <a href="http://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/5597/">understanding, grieving and mending the wounds</a> of America’s violent past. Merely hiding away the monuments does not necessarily change <a href="https://theconversation.com/tearing-down-confederate-statues-leaves-structural-racism-intact-101951">the structural racism that birthed them</a>. </p>
<p>Studies show that the environment in which statues are displayed <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1464936042000252769?journalCode=rscg20">shapes how people understand their meaning</a>. In that sense, relocating monuments, rather than eliminating them, can help people put this painful history into context. </p>
<p>For example, monuments to Confederate war heroes first appeared in cemeteries <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/585508">immediately following</a> the Civil War. That likely evoked in visitors a direct and private honoring and grieving for the dead. </p>
<p>By the early 1900s, hundreds of Confederate statues dotted courthouse lawns and town squares across the South. This prominent, centrally located setting on government property sent an <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future">intentionally different message</a>: that local officials endorsed the prevailing white social order.</p>
<p>So what should we do with rejected Confederate monuments? We have a modest proposal: a Confederate statue graveyard.</p>
<h2>Lessons from the Soviet past</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780815354260">research as cultural geographers</a> recognizes that Confederate monument controversies – while typically considered regional or national issues – are in fact part of <a href="https://theconversation.com/brazils-long-strange-love-affair-with-the-confederacy-ignites-racial-tension-115548">global struggles</a> to recognize and heal from the wounds of racism, white supremacy and anti-democratic regimes.</p>
<p>The idea of a Confederate monument graveyard is modeled after ways that the former communist bloc nations of <a href="http://www.mementopark.hu/">Hungary</a>, <a href="http://grutoparkas.lt/en_US/">Lithuania</a> and <a href="https://www.ajaloomuuseum.ee/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/noukogude-aegsete-monumentide-valinaitus">Estonia</a> have dealt with statues of Soviet heroes like <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/russia/history-of-the-soviet-union">Joseph Stalin</a> and Vladimir Lenin.</p>
<p>Under communist Soviet rule between 1945 and 1991, Eastern European countries suffered <a href="https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin">mass starvation</a>, land theft, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/4477/iron-curtain-by-anne-applebaum/9781400095933/">military rule and rigid censorship</a>. An estimated <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Great-Terror-Reassessment-Robert-Conquest/dp/0195317009">15 million</a> people in the Soviet bloc died during this totalitarian reign.</p>
<p>Despite these horrors, many countries have opted not to destroy or hide their Soviet-era monuments, but they haven’t left them to rule over city hall or public plazas, either. </p>
<p>Rather, governments in Eastern Europe have altered the meaning of these politically charged Soviet statues by relocating them. Dozens of Soviet statues across Hungary, Lithuania and Estonia have been pulled from their pedestals and placed in open-air parks, where interested visitors can reflect on their new significance.</p>
<p>The idea behind relocating monuments is to dethrone dominant historical narratives that, in their traditional places of power, are tacitly endorsed.</p>
<h2>A statue graveyard</h2>
<p>The Eastern European effort to create a new <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10708-008-9201-5">memorial landscape</a> has been met with mixed public reaction. </p>
<p>In Hungary, some see it as <a href="https://urbanlabsce.eu/budapests-memento-park-an-example-for-america/">a step in the right direction</a>. But, in Lithuania, people have expressed that re-erecting the statues of known dictators is in “<a href="https://www.economist.com/prospero/2017/08/30/how-lithuania-dealt-with-its-soviet-statues">poor taste</a>” – an affront to those who suffered under totalitarianism. </p>
<p>The relocation of Soviet statues in Estonia has taken an even more interesting turn. </p>
<p>For the past decade, the <a href="https://www.ajaloomuuseum.ee">Estonian History Museum</a> has been collecting former Soviet monuments with the intention of <a href="https://www.ajaloomuuseum.ee/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/noukogude-aegsete-monumentide-valinaitus">making an outdoor exhibition</a> out of them. For years it kept a decapitated Lenin and a noseless Stalin, among other degraded Soviet relics, <a href="https://www.timetravelturtle.com/soviet-statue-graveyard-tallinn-estonia/">in a field next to the museum</a>. </p>
<p>The statues weathered Eastern European winters and languished in a defunct, toppled state. Weeds grew over them. The elements took their toll. </p>
<p>Travel writer <a href="https://www.timetravelturtle.com/soviet-statue-graveyard-tallinn-estonia/">Michael Turtle</a>, who visited the museum in 2015, called the field a “statue graveyard.”</p>
<p>“Everything here seems to fit into some kind of purgatorial limbo,” he wrote on his blog. “The statues are not respected enough to be displayed as history but are culturally significant enough to not just be destroyed.” </p>
<p>To this we would add that these old statues, when repurposed thoughtfully and intentionally, have the potential to mend old wounds.</p>
<h2>Confederate monument graveyard</h2>
<p>What if the United States created its own graveyard for the distasteful relics of its own racist past? </p>
<p>We envision a cemetery for the American South where removed Confederate statues would be displayed, perhaps, in a felled position – a visual condemnation of the white supremacy they fought to uphold. Already crumpled monuments, like the statue to “The Boys Who Wore Grey” that was <a href="https://www.apnews.com/dace53761754407a8d48c193d52d522e">forcefully removed from downtown Durham, North Carolina</a>, might be placed in the Confederate statue graveyard in their <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article224038660.html">defunct state</a>. </p>
<p>One art critic has even <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathonkeats/2019/02/15/getty-monument/#624ec6e452c5">suggested</a> that old monuments be physically buried under tombstones with epitaphs written by the descendants of those they enslaved. </p>
<p>We are not the first to suggest relocating Confederate statues.</p>
<p>Democratic presidential candidate <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elizabeth-warren-president-confederate-monuments-museum-a8830841.html">Elizabeth Warren</a>, for example, has proposed that toppled Confederate statues be housed in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-museum-of-confederate-statues-could-help-end-the-american-civil-war-82934">history museum</a> – “where they belong.” </p>
<p>That has proven <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/are-museums-right-home-confederate-monuments-180968969/">challenging for curators</a>. </p>
<p>When The University of Texas moved a statue of the Confederate President Jefferson Davis from its pedestal on campus to a campus museum, some <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/What-Happened-When-One/244481">students criticized</a> the ensuing exhibit’s “lack of focus on racism and slavery.” One suggested that the statue’s new setting inadvertently glorified Davis, given the inherent value conferred on objects in museums. </p>
<p>And since statues in museums are typically exhibited in their original, upright position, Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee still tower over visitors – maintaining an imposing sense of authority.</p>
<p>We believe felled and crumpled monuments, in contrast, would create a somber commemorative atmosphere that encourages visitors to grieve – without revering – their legacy. A carefully-planned and aesthetically sensitive Confederate monument graveyard could openly and purposefully undermine the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2747/0272-3638.23.1.31">power these monuments once held</a>, acknowledging, dissecting and ultimately rejecting the Confederacy’s roots in slavery.</p>
<p>Planning a Confederate monument graveyard will prompt many questions. Where should it be located? Will there be one central Confederate monument graveyard or many? Who will design and plan the graveyard?</p>
<p>Answering these questions would not just be part of a conversation about steel and stone but about the serious pursuit of peace, justice and racial healing in the nation — and about putting the Old South to rest. </p>
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<p><a href="http://www.aag.org">Jordan Brasher is a member of the American Association of Geographers</a></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.aag.org">Derek H. Alderman is a member of the American Association of Geographers</a></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Brasher is a member of the American Association of Geographers.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek H. Alderman is a member of the American Association of Geographers</span></em></p>Where do old Confederate statues go when they die? The former Soviet bloc countries could teach the US something about dealing with monuments from a painful past.Jordan Brasher, Doctoral Candidate in Geography, University of TennesseeDerek H. Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1116522019-02-15T12:10:24Z2019-02-15T12:10:24ZMarx and Thatcher: how memorials have become the lightning rods of 21st-century protest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259268/original/file-20190215-56229-1wzbhsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marx's tombstone was vandalised with a hammer in February 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paasikivi via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In January 2018, Westminster Council <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/23/plans-margaret-thatcher-statue-westminster-rejected">turned down plans</a> for a four-metre high statue of Margaret Thatcher in Parliament Square. The council explained that a new statue in the square, which is already home to Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela, would lead to “monument saturation”. </p>
<p>But there were also concerns that a memorial in London to Britain’s first female prime minister – still a divisive figure – would be likely to provoke protest and potential vandalism. A year later, when Grantham – where Thatcher grew up – announced it would <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-47134760">host the memorial</a>, it said the 10-foot statue would be placed on a plinth of equal height to deter vandals. </p>
<p>At around the same time this decision was announced, on February 5, the grave stone of Karl Marx in London’s Highgate Cemetery <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/05/karl-marx-london-grave-vandalised-suspected-hammer-attack-highgate-cemetery">was vandalised</a> by an unknown assailant using a hammer. The chief executive of the charity that maintains the cemetery has remarked that the Grade I listed monument would “never be the same again”. A fortnight before that, the RAF Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park was similarly vandalised, although this time the perpetrators used white paint. It was the fourth time in only six years that the memorial has been defaced.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, various other memorials are provoking increasingly intense debate, especially in the US and Britain, where campaigns for the removal of statues of Confederate leaders, transatlantic slavers, and empire builders continue to garner support. So why are memorials and monuments provoking such interest and even anger?</p>
<h2>Power and memory</h2>
<p>In part, the answer is that this is by no means new. After all, despite their apparent “concrete” qualities, memorials invariably provoke intense debate – and those arguments do not simply disappear once the memorial is built. This is particularly the case following regime change: see, for example, the attacks made on royalist sculptures and statues during the American Revolution or the removal of Soviet era statues in places like Hungary and Poland. </p>
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<p>And who can forget the iconic images of the toppling of the huge statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad during the invasion by US-led forces in 2003? To destroy or remove a memorial is a recognised mechanism through which a newly arrived power asserts its presence and delegitimises its predecessor.</p>
<p>Of course, such moments of “regime change” are relatively rare – and the recent acts of vandalism noted above are clearly of a different order and scale. But they are indicative of the same essential truth: that public sculpture is always inherently political. Seen in this light, a society’s commemorative architecture is a very visible record of its politics of power. </p>
<p>This would explain why in Britain the memorial landscape bequeathed by the Victorians and Edwardians is so disproportionately <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/03/i-sorted-uk-s-statues-gender-mere-27-cent-are-historical-non-royal-women">white and male</a>. This was the class and gender in power – and the events and individuals they commemorated are, in a sense, reflections of themselves. </p>
<p>It was a similar situation in the early 20th-century American South, an age of legalised segregation and racist violence – and the Confederate memorials made in its midst are its commemorative signature, the architecture of Jim Crow. For many African-Americans, these were the purposefully intimidating statues often established in Southern cities by the very same people as were simultaneously adding racially discriminatory statutes to Southern law books. In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights campaign launched a courageous attack on the law books – but many of the statues remain.</p>
<h2>Contesting the past</h2>
<p>In recent years, various interest groups have emerged to contest the existing commemorative landscape, challenges that are expressive of a thriving politics of social protest – as well as of changing ideas of exactly what and who is worthy of veneration. Those involved, many of whom are simultaneously protesting against inequalities in the present, rightly perceive that public sculpture is never value-free. This is why they question the continued legitimacy of signs and symbols that are decidedly out of step with the values of 21st-century multicultural democracy – see, for instance, the ongoing debate about the legacy of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-45825768">slave-trader Edward Colston</a> in Bristol. </p>
<p>These challenges and campaigns have in turn helped produce new statues suggestive of modern ideals, such as the one dedicated to Millicent Fawcett in London, or the removal of “old” statues to those now seen as divisive figures, such as the memorials to Confederate leaders in the US.</p>
<p>But on the other hand, this era of engaged commemorative discussion and debate has also produced a far more shadowy set of activities: acts of monument vandalism. Such acts are clearly very different in purpose and process to the carefully planned removal of, for instance, Confederate memorials, with the latter the product of local campaigns and legislative oversight. But acts of vandalism nonetheless exist at the other – illegitimate – end of the same spectrum of activity, one which finds in certain monuments a power and presence to contest.</p>
<p>This has also been intensified by the rise of social media, where details of a planned attack – or some other form of “intervention” – can circulate and recirculate and draw new waves of energy, support or anger. And this can double back on the memorial itself. Suddenly, thanks to the echo chambers of social media, a statue that has been in place for longer than anyone can remember, takes on new meaning and potency. </p>
<p>This is becoming increasingly visible given the social fractures and fissures recently exposed in the US, Britain and Europe by the rise of new populist nationalisms as well as the connected emergence of competing visions of both the past and present. In this moment, the stone and statuary of earlier times have become the lightning rods of a politics of protest and counter-protest as various groups and individuals contest the commemorative landscape of 21st-century society – both in situ and online.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111652/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, and the US Army Military History Institute.</span></em></p>Statues to divisive figures are increasingly becoming the target of protest and vandalism.Sam Edwards, Senior Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1031372018-09-27T10:34:49Z2018-09-27T10:34:49Z10 US military bases are named after Confederate generals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238226/original/file-20180926-48641-1fym8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Fort Hood military base in Killeen, Texas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Fort-Hood/081f4ed25fa546a98a53172a338da779/1/0">AP Photo/ Tamir Kalifa</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the debate over Confederate symbols in the U.S., the <a href="http://time.com/3932914/army-bases-confederate/">10 Army bases</a> named after Confederate generals who fought for the South during the Civil War have largely escaped scrutiny. </p>
<p>As a former newspaper reporter and a current journalism professor, I have wondered why the media have mostly overlooked this story of military installations that still bear the names of those who fought to maintain slavery and white supremacy.</p>
<p>Working for a newspaper in Norfolk, Virginia, 37 years ago, I covered an event where nearly 30,000 Boy Scouts from across the country converged on Fort A.P. Hill, about 80 miles south of Washington, D.C., for a week of fellowship and fun. It was the <a href="https://history.oa-bsa.org/node/3142">Boy Scouts’ 1981 Jamboree</a>, and the theme that year was “Scouting’s Reunion with History.”</p>
<p>Looking back, I feel more than a tinge of regret: I missed the real story at the Jamboree. That story was all about history.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/p-hill">Ambrose Powell Hill Jr.</a> was a Confederate general who died during a battle in Petersburg, Virginia, south of Richmond, in 1865. Before the Civil War, he was in the U.S. Army. But as Virginia seceded from the Union, Hill resigned and joined the efforts to defend the Confederate States of America.</p>
<p>I wonder if the Scouts back in ’81 knew that their Jamboree was being held on an Army base named in honor of a man who fought, in effect, to defend slavery. </p>
<p>That is the story I should have written.</p>
<h2>All 10 in the South</h2>
<p>Virginia has three of the 10 military installations named after Confederates. Louisiana and Georgia each have two. Alabama, North Carolina and Texas each have one. </p>
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<p>The bases were named for such figures as <a href="http://www.lee.army.mil/about/history.aspx">Robert E. Lee</a> of Virginia, who commanded the Confederate Army; <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/p-g-t-beauregard">Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard</a> of Louisiana, whose troops shelled Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 12, 1861, launching the Civil War; and John Brown Gordon of Georgia, who <a href="http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/john-b-gordon-1832-1904">historians say</a> was a Ku Klux Klan leader after the war.</p>
<p>Four of the bases were established at the start of World War I, and the others at the start of World War II – times when the Army was in recruitment mode and appealing to young white men in the South. This was an era when Southern states promoted the <a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lost_Cause_The">“Lost Cause” ideology</a>: that the Confederacy’s rebellion was an honorable struggle for the Southern way of life and that the “War of Northern Aggression” was over states’ rights, not slavery. From their perspective at the time, memorializing Confederate generals seemed reasonable.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2015/06/24/1-star-posts-named-for-soldiers-not-confederate-cause/">Army officials have said</a> they named the bases in the spirit of reconciliation, not division. They viewed the Confederate generals as tragic heroes, not treasonable racists. </p>
<h2>Changing perspectives</h2>
<p>The Lost Cause ideology, which portrays slaves as happy and their owners as benevolent, has been thoroughly <a href="https://www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm%3Fid%3D217">discredited</a>. In recent years, communities across the U.S. have questioned, if not dismantled, statues and other symbols memorializing the Confederacy.</p>
<p>While such efforts have focused on local landmarks, I believe an even stronger case could be made for renaming national symbols that evoke the Confederacy. Soldiers of various races and ethnicities are stationed at the Army bases. For decades, defense officials have <a href="https://twitter.com/ArmyChiefStaff/status/897742317897093121">spoken forcefully</a> against racial intolerance. </p>
<p>Some members of Congress want to rename the military facilities. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3658/text">Legislation</a> filed in August 2017 by U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., would require the Defense Department to rename any military property “that is currently named after any individual who took up arms against the United States during the American Civil War.”</p>
<p>Clarke’s proposal has languished for a year in a congressional subcommittee. </p>
<p>If my journalism students could travel back in time to the 1981 National Scout Jamboree, I hope they would follow the Boy Scouts’ motto to “be prepared.” I want them to be ready to ask questions about how a U.S. Army base came to be named for someone who fought against the Army – and whether it’s right to honor defenders of a society that enslaved people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103137/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff South does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In scrutinizing statues honoring Confederate figures, journalists have overlooked military bases named after generals who fought to defend the slavery of black people.Jeff South, Associate Professor of Journalism, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1019512018-08-24T10:40:51Z2018-08-24T10:40:51ZTearing down Confederate statues leaves structural racism intact<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233318/original/file-20180823-149481-1v81bhy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters toppled the 'Silent Sam' Confederate statue on Aug. 20 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Confederate-Monuments/4e1df664e05f4d88af0ee42b86ecb663/3/0">Gerry Broome/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When protesters tore down the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/08/21/640435962/after-a-year-of-rising-tensions-protesters-tear-down-confederate-statue-on-unc-c">“Silent Sam”</a> Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill on Aug. 20, it wasn’t just <a href="https://chapelboro.com/news/unc/sbi-assisting-silent-sam-investigation-amid-questions-policing-tactics">destruction of state property</a> - a crime for which the protesters are now being investigated.</p>
<p>Rather, the protesters knocked a powerful symbol of white supremacy from its pedestal - both literally and figuratively. Silent Sam, after all, was meant to pay tribute to those who wanted to maintain slavery.</p>
<p>With the backing of the state, Silent Sam has stood proudly and defiantly at UNC Chapel Hill <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2018/08/22/scholars-explain-the-racist-history-of-uncs-silent-sam-statue/#52cb10b0114f">since 1913</a>. Now the statue has become one of many in <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/08/21/which-confederate-statues-were-removed-running-list.html">dozens of cities and municipalities</a> where monuments of Confederate soldiers and generals have been removed – mostly with official sanction.</p>
<p>But what, if anything, will this latest removal of a Confederate statue accomplish?</p>
<p>While the removal of Silent Sam was a joyous moment for protesters who had long requested that the university acknowledge that the statue was a divisive symbol of white supremacy – for the opposing side, it was an example of what they call the intolerance of the left, particularly among those <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/08/21/640435962/after-a-year-of-rising-tensions-protesters-tear-down-confederate-statue-on-unc-c">who oppose the views and policies of President Trump</a>.</p>
<h2>Slavery at root of divide</h2>
<p>This divide has deep historical roots. Silent Sam and the other <a href="https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments">700-plus Confederate statues</a> still standing in the U.S. represent a legacy of slavery and the structural racism that followed.</p>
<p>My book, “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/weeping-time/5508CF20D6430EA872C661B8E0BC7995">The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History</a>,” documented one important aspect of antebellum slavery. The harsh and devastating reality of slave auctions meant that profit mattered more than people. My book is <a href="https://annecbailey.net/slavery-was-not-choice-but-listening-to/">one of many new books</a> that seek to <a href="http://www.beacon.org/African-Voices-of-the-Atlantic-Slave-Trade-P579.aspx">remind</a> a <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807859162/slavery-and-public-history/">forgetful</a> public of <a href="http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/america-s-original-sin/343774">America’s original sin</a>.</p>
<p>Beginning first in Virginia in 1662, with the other colonies and states following suit, officials enacted laws to specify that slave status followed the condition of the mother. This continued right up to the eve of the Civil War in 1861 where the enslaved were still bought and sold on the open market. And so, until the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, to be black in America was synonymous with a separate and unequal status. </p>
<p>The American Civil War was fought to settle the question as to whether blacks should continue to be separate and unequal or whether the United States of America would finally be united – united in its commitment to the notion of justice and equality put forth in the Declaration of the Independence.</p>
<p>The simple fact is that the North won the war, and in winning it, the North preserved the union. The Confederate statues, therefore, represent a step backwards – a symbol of what the United States once was – not what it is now.</p>
<h2>Averting a civil war over statues</h2>
<p>Today, the nation is experiencing what some call a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/28/baltimore-remove-confederate-monuments-mayor-new-orleans">civil war over statues.</a>
The only way to avert this new civil war – in some ways a symbolic one over the outcome of the original Civil War - is to have dialogue. And after dialogue, actions must follow. It could be that protesters who toppled Silent Sam acted out of a sense that <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/21/protesters-tear-down-confederate-statue-unc-chapel-hill">dialogue had reached a standstill</a> after years of debate. </p>
<p>Communities may decide to take the statues down or replace them with monuments that honor abolitionists like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, <a href="https://worldhistoryproject.org/1859/us-senator-william-seward-sells-harriet-tubman-house-in-auburn-new-york">William H. Seward</a> or <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2012/novemberdecember/feature/remarkable-radical-thaddeus-stevens">Thaddeus Stephens</a>. They may also choose to keep the Confederate statues intact with a plaque that gives a more balanced view of the causes of the war. In this way, they would be used as a tool to teach about the Civil War – one of the bloodiest chapters in American history and one that none of us should want to repeat.</p>
<p>Tearing down Confederate statues may actually do little to further the goal of ending the legacy of slavery. It will not bring about systemic change or end notions of white supremacy or eradicate structural racism.</p>
<p>The more difficult work when it comes to dismantling the legacy of slavery involves ending some of slavery’s byproducts, such as <a href="http://genup.net/connect/action-portal?id=101">mass incarceration of black and brown bodies</a> and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wright-edelman/the-education-inequality_b_8790322.html">systemic educational inequities</a> for children of color. The hope is that those protesters will channel their zeal and apply it to these thorny and persistent problems. There is <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-farmer-calls-out-liberal-racism-in-powerful-facebook-message_us_5925a027e4b0650cc020eb4d">no easy fix.</a> But if and when that fix does come, 100 years from now, America will be remembered not only for its technological advances – such as its computers, its robots or its driverless cars - but for its commitment to human rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne C. Bailey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Toppling statues devoted to Confederate soldiers may be a joyous moment for protesters who fight white supremacy, but after the statues fall, structural racism remains, a scholar on slavery argues.Anne C. Bailey, Professor of History, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1005712018-08-07T10:42:48Z2018-08-07T10:42:48ZThink Confederate monuments are racist? Consider pioneer monuments<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230308/original/file-20180801-136667-8m7n1w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Early Days.' Detail of Frank Happersberger's pioneer monument, San Francisco, California, 1894. Photo by Lisa Allen.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cynthia Prescott</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In San Francisco, there is an an 800-ton monument that retells California history, from the Spanish missions to American settlement. Several bronze sculptures and relief plaques depict American Indians, white miners, missionaries and settlers. A female figure symbolizing white culture stands atop a massive stone pillar.</p>
<p>The design of the “pioneer monument” was celebrated in newspapers across the country when it was erected in 1894. Today, however, <a href="https://sf.curbed.com/2018/2/22/17040208/pioneer-monument-native-american-racist-statue-removal">activists have argued</a> that the monument – particularly its depiction of a Spanish missionary and Mexican “vaquero,” or cowboy, towering over an American Indian – is demeaning to American Indians.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230309/original/file-20180801-136649-17y2mw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230309/original/file-20180801-136649-17y2mw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230309/original/file-20180801-136649-17y2mw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230309/original/file-20180801-136649-17y2mw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230309/original/file-20180801-136649-17y2mw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230309/original/file-20180801-136649-17y2mw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230309/original/file-20180801-136649-17y2mw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frank Happersberger’s pioneer monument, San Francisco, California, 1894. Lisa Allen.</span>
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</figure>
<p>Should the city take down part of this 125-year-old monument? </p>
<p>Many cities are removing or reinterpreting their Confederate monuments, with the understanding that they commemorate racism. But few Americans realize that pioneer monuments placed across the country are also racist. </p>
<p>As my <a href="https://pioneermonuments.net/">research</a> and <a href="https://pioneermonuments.net/book/">forthcoming book</a> on pioneer monuments since the 1890s show, most early pioneer statues celebrated whites dominating American Indians.</p>
<h2>Confederate and pioneer monuments</h2>
<p>Since at least 2015, cities across the United States have debated what to do with <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20180604/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy">more than 700</a> Confederate monuments.</p>
<p>After the Civil War, grieving widows raised funds to place monuments to soldiers in southern cemeteries. But most statues of Confederate leaders and foot soldiers were put up around 1900 by heritage organizations to honor the “Lost Cause.” </p>
<p>The “Lost Cause” is the idea that that the Civil War began as a heroic defense against northern aggression. In fact, the Civil War was primarily fought to <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2011/04/12/135353655/slavery-not-states-rights-was-civil-wars-cause">defend slavery</a>. </p>
<p>In the past few years, cities such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/05/20/529232823/with-lee-statues-removal-another-battle-of-new-orleans-comes-to-a-close">New Orleans</a>, Louisiana and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/baltimore-takes-down-four-confederate-statues-after-charlottesville-violence-n793101">Baltimore</a>, Maryland have chosen to remove their Confederate statues. Activists <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/08/14/protesters-in-north-carolina-topple-confederate-statue-following-charlottesville-violence/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8305ab18a6d1">tore down</a> a Confederate soldier statue in Durham, North Carolina last year.</p>
<p>By contrast, there has been far less attention on the roughly <a href="https://pioneermonuments.net/">200 pioneer monuments</a> erected for similar reasons around the same time. </p>
<p><iframe id="Wroll" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Wroll/5/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The earliest pioneer monuments were put up in midwestern and western cities such as <a href="https://pioneermonuments.net/search-monuments/?city=Des%20Moines%2C%20IA">Des Moines</a>, Iowa and San Francisco, California. They date from the 1890s and early 1900s, as whites settled the frontier and pushed American Indians onto reservations. </p>
<p>Those statues showed white men claiming land and building farms and cities in the West. They explicitly celebrated the dominant white view of the Wild West progressing from American Indian “savagery” to white “civilization.” </p>
<p>Deviations from that script produced public controversy. For example, Denver residents in 1907 <a href="http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/7029/">vocally opposed</a> prominent American sculptor Frederick MacMonnies’s plan for a pioneer monument. MacMonnies proposed a large stone pillar surrounded by bronze hunters, miners and settlers similar to San Francisco’s celebrated monument. MacMonnies’s model included a mounted Plains American Indian warrior atop the pillar to show American Indians yielding to white settlement.</p>
<p>But Denver residents expected the figure at the top of the pillar to represent the pinnacle of progress, like “Eureka,” the female figure representing the spirit of California on San Francisco’s monument. </p>
<p>Denver’s residents argued that the monument needed a white man on top, so MacMonnies revised his design, replacing the American Indian warrior with frontiersman and American Indian fighter Kit Carson, on horseback.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230312/original/file-20180801-136652-vcfysq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230312/original/file-20180801-136652-vcfysq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230312/original/file-20180801-136652-vcfysq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230312/original/file-20180801-136652-vcfysq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230312/original/file-20180801-136652-vcfysq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230312/original/file-20180801-136652-vcfysq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230312/original/file-20180801-136652-vcfysq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">August Leimbach, Madonna of the Trail, Springfield, Ohio, 1928.</span>
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</figure>
<p>By the 1920s, whites controlled most western lands, and they stopped depicting American Indians in their pioneer monuments. New pioneer monuments from Maryland to California focused on western women. Pioneer mothers in sunbonnets stood for white “civilization” winning in the West. And they offered a conservative model of womanhood to contrast <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-history-of-the-flapper-part-1-a-call-for-freedom-11957978/">flappers</a> wearing short dresses and bobbed hair and women’s growing <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2012/10/birth-control-marriage-and-womens-sexuality/">sexual freedom</a>.</p>
<p>More recent monuments, such as Goodland, Kansas’s “<a href="https://pioneermonuments.net/search-monuments/?city=Goodland%2C%20KS">They Came to Stay</a>” and Omaha, Nebraska’s “<a href="https://pioneermonuments.net/search-monuments/?sculpture=Pioneer%20Courage">Pioneer Courage</a>,” do not directly engage racial politics. As their titles suggest, these statues honor pioneer families’ grit, and they teach local history.</p>
<p>But these statues still represent a racist view, ignoring the cost of white settlement on Native lands. Like earlier monuments, they reinforce white dominance and erase ethnic diversity in the American West.</p>
<h2>Pioneer monuments today</h2>
<p>The recent debate about Confederate monuments has sparked some discussion of pioneer monuments in a few places. In April, Kalamazoo, Michigan <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fountain-depicting-armed-white-settler-towering-over-native-american-be-removed-kalamazoo-180968855/">removed</a> its 1940 “Fountain of the Pioneers” because local residents disliked its depiction of a white settler looming over an American Indian.</p>
<p>After decades of protest, San Francisco <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Proposal-to-remove-Early-Days-statue-in-SF-12992952.php">debated</a> taking down the depiction of a Spanish missionary towering over an American Indian from the 1894 pioneer monument. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, activists persuaded the city to <a href="https://sfgov.org/arts/sites/default/files/100217_Pioneer_Monument_Staff_Report.pdf">place a plaque</a> telling the dark side of California history in front of the statue. But today’s protesters argued that plaque, hidden by landscaping, is not enough. They want “Early Days” – if not the entire monument – taken down. </p>
<p>The San Francisco Arts Commission agrees, but the Board of Appeals <a href="https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/bay_area/san-francisco-board-votes-to-keep-controversial-statue/article_fbe0eb72-4446-11e8-b17c-873a0ac9c795.html">blocked</a> its removal in April.</p>
<p>On September 14, 2018, the “Early Days” statue was removed from the San Francisco monument and placed in storage. In April 2019, about 150 Native American leaders and youth from across California posed for photographs on the empty base where “Early Days” once stood. The photos will be part of the San Francisco Art Commission’s American Indian Initiative.</p>
<p>Each pioneer monument has its own history and local meaning. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. But communities are beginning to consider removing or reinterpreting these monuments to white conquest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100571/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cynthia Prescott receives funding from the Whiting Foundation. </span></em></p>Many cities are removing their Confederate statues. But pioneer monuments represent a racist past, too. There are at least 200 of them, and their future is now being debated.Cynthia Prescott, Associate Professor of History, University of North DakotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/828782017-11-02T02:54:41Z2017-11-02T02:54:41ZWhat the history of iconoclasm tells us about the Confederate statue controversy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188062/original/file-20170928-2939-1sqtnls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Confederate statue lies on a pallet in a warehouse in Durham, North Carolina after protesters toppled and defaced it.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Confederate-Monument-Protest-Statue-Toppled/15d7476fae6e4d1d887d525278683db8/4/0">AP Photo/Allen Breed</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the last few months, a new American civil war seems to have broken out. It isn’t being fought with weapons. Instead, it’s being fought with statues and symbols, and at the heart of the dispute is the question of whether statues of Confederate heroes should be allowed to stand.</p>
<p>After a violent “Unite the Right” rally ostensibly intended to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, an enthusiastic mob <a href="http://time.com/4900779/durham-north-carolina-confederate-statue-pulled-down-protesters/">pulled down a bronze figure in North Carolina</a>, massive Confederate statues in Baltimore <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/baltimore-confederate-statues_us_5994274fe4b009141641806b">were surreptitiously removed at night</a> and New York City <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/397022/confederate-symbols-removed-nyc/">is formally reviewing</a> which of its public statues should be allowed to remain in place. </p>
<p>The President <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/346929-trump-revives-defense-of-confederate-monuments">has weighed in</a>, along with his chief of staff, John Kelly, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-chief-of-staff-kelly-decries-removal-of-monuments/2017/10/31/f46b2702-be24-11e7-9294-705f80164f6e_story.html?utm_term=.36fbbc09e2b3">who said</a> their removal would set a “very, very dangerous” precedent. It’s even become <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/confederate-monuments-become-hot-button-issue-in-va-governors-race/">an issue</a> in the Virginia governor’s race.</p>
<p>How did a bunch of statues (most of which are conventional in their appearance) become a canvas for passion, vitriol and violence? Are the defenders of the Confederate statues correct when they say their destruction or their removal sets a dangerous precedent?</p>
<p>To answer these questions, it’s helpful to look at the issue through the lens of history – to when the destruction of statues became a political act. </p>
<h2>‘I will hack up the flesh’</h2>
<p>The art of the cavemen tended to use animals as its subject; the representation of humans – aside from female fertility statues – is rare. The images of people that do exist mostly show them in animal guise or animal costume, presumably shamans. Art was religious but apparently not very political.</p>
<p>This changed with the advent of agriculture and the emergence of Middle Eastern city-states – empires ruled by kings who claimed support from gods and who maintained strict forms of social hierarchy. These rulers asserted their power with statues of themselves and their gods. And it was during this period in human history that <a href="http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/iconoclasm.htm">iconoclasm</a> – the destruction of images for political and religious reasons – first emerged.</p>
<p>If these kingdoms were overthrown, it was standard practice to subject their rulers and military leaders to horrible forms of public torture and execution: flaying them alive, cutting off of eyes, noses and other body parts and then displaying them. </p>
<p>“I will hack up the flesh and then carry it with me, to show off in other countries,” <a href="http://www.jmhinternational.com/news/news/selectednews/files/2009/05/20090519_SpiegelOnline_TheWorstWaysToDie_TorturePracticesOfTheAncientWorld.pdf">proclaimed Ashurbanipal</a>, an Assyrian king who ruled from 668 to 627 B.C. (<a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=32865001&objectid=366859">A well-known relief</a> in the British Museum shows Ashurbanipal consuming a sumptuous meal, while the severed head of Teuman, King of Elam, hangs from a nearby tree as a marker of his power.)</p>
<p>Statues and memorials of rulers were subjected to similar forms of mutilation. For example, a copper statue of an Akkadian ruler from Nineveh <a href="https://www.learner.org/courses/globalart/work/266/index.html">was famously defaced</a>, very likely when the Medes sacked Nineveh in 612 B.C. The head was severed from the body, the ears were cut off, the eyes were gouged out and the lower part of the beard was trimmed, as if an actual captive were being tortured and humiliated. (Today, its “remains” live in the National Museum of Iraq.)</p>
<p>In many ways, the destruction of a statue mimicked attacks on real people, and this aspect of iconoclasm surely remains central to the practice today.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-uAZa4H1vk">In videos</a> of the Durham, North Carolina statue of a Confederate soldier being roped around the neck and pulled from his pedestal, what’s striking is the glee of the crowd in mutilating it. Aggressive instincts were clearly at work, not unlike those present in a lynching, or that led to the dismemberment of the Akkadian effigy.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H-uAZa4H1vk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters topple a Confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Religious iconoclasm</h2>
<p>While such vandalism has most often been directed at images of warriors and rulers, it’s been directed toward religious images as well. </p>
<p>In Egypt, the Pharaoh <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/english-literature-1499-biographies/akhenaten">Akhenaten</a> created a monotheistic religion that worshiped the sun god, Aten. He ordered the destruction of all images of other gods, a practice rescinded after his death. (Most likely the edicts reflected a political struggle of some sort between Akhenaten and powerful priests.)</p>
<p>But perhaps <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-450-1000/byzantium-iconoclast-era-c-680850-history?format=PB">the most famous instance of iconoclasm</a> still isn’t very well-understood, since we have accounts only from the victors, written years after the fact. </p>
<p>During the early Christian period, the Byzantine Emperor Leo III ordered the destruction of all Christian images, on the grounds that they represented idolatry and were heretical. The policy deeply divided the empire and caused the pope in Rome to anathematize and excommunicate the emperor’s iconoclast followers. The dispute finally ended about 842 with the compromise that henceforth icons would be venerated but not worshiped in the Byzantine Empire. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188061/original/file-20170928-1488-ja3sun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188061/original/file-20170928-1488-ja3sun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188061/original/file-20170928-1488-ja3sun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188061/original/file-20170928-1488-ja3sun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188061/original/file-20170928-1488-ja3sun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188061/original/file-20170928-1488-ja3sun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188061/original/file-20170928-1488-ja3sun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188061/original/file-20170928-1488-ja3sun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The destruction of a church during the Byzantine era.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:48-manasses-chronicle.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What’s fascinating is that a theological debate – how to treat religious icons – also served as a focal point for political and cultural rivalries within the empire. We see echoes of this today in the Confederate statue debate, with various political and cultural factions picking sides.</p>
<h2>Monuments to…losers?</h2>
<p>Confederate monuments are unusual in that they celebrate not the victors of a war, but the losers. </p>
<p>When Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered in 1865, <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/es/alston/econ4524/readings/South%20After%20the%20Civil%20War-%20Atack%20and%20Passell.pdf">the South was in shambles</a>. Beyond the defeat of its military, courts, law enforcement capabilities and local economies had collapsed. </p>
<p>In order to gloss over the extent of this disaster, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/its-time-for-the-lost-cause-of-the-south-to-get-lost">the region devised a series of fictions</a>, among them the notion that the leaders of the defeated Confederate Army were unblemished heroes, or perhaps hadn’t even been defeated in the first place. It was a way to impose some sort of order on a society that risked descending into pure anarchy – and also a sham front to all sorts of dysfunctional things (above all a nasty, codified racial hierarchy).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188060/original/file-20170928-2939-435ari.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188060/original/file-20170928-2939-435ari.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188060/original/file-20170928-2939-435ari.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188060/original/file-20170928-2939-435ari.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188060/original/file-20170928-2939-435ari.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188060/original/file-20170928-2939-435ari.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188060/original/file-20170928-2939-435ari.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188060/original/file-20170928-2939-435ari.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A frieze from a Confederate monument in Virginia depicts a Confederate soldier kissing a black baby.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Confederate_Monument_-_NE_frieze_mammy_-_Arlington_National_Cemetery_-_2011.JPG">Tim1965</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Confederate statues, which were erected into the mid-20th century, were an outgrowth of this attitude. What’s surprising is how many of them there are: While there doesn’t seem to be an exact count, they number <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20160421/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy#findings">well over 1,000</a>. For more than a century they stood mute, unquestioned and largely unnoticed in thousands of public squares. </p>
<p>Rather abruptly, that’s changed.</p>
<h2>A symbolic hollowness</h2>
<p>A matter that’s intriguing to me, given the vehemence of the outcry, is that most Confederate monuments aren’t particularly interesting. As purely visual statements, they’re not very expressive. With a few exceptions, they take one of two forms – that of a standing foot soldier, or that of a colonel or general riding a horse. </p>
<p>For the most part, they’re indistinguishable from monuments celebrating Union soldiers; absent historical context, it would be hard to deduce that they celebrate racism – or anything, for that matter. </p>
<p>Their distinguishing characteristic is a sort of symbolic hollowness.</p>
<p>As “works of art” they’re strangely similar to Marcel Duchamp’s <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.291">famous urinal</a>, a store-bought object which became an artistic masterpiece not because an artist made it but because an artist – the eponymous R. Mutt – signed his name to it, and thereby transformed an ordinary object into a work of art. Similarly, the message attached to these Confederate statues has little to do with their visual appearance. It’s almost entirely arbitrary. The central factor in determining their meaning is the name we assign to them: Bragg, Branton and Bratley (Confederate heroes), or Banks, Burnside and Butler (who fought for the Union). </p>
<p>But iconoclasm tends to almost entirely ignore visual and artistic considerations. Instead, the monuments and statues are seen as assertions of political power. Mutilating a statue becomes equivalent to killing or mutilating an enemy. Both major and minor works of art are destroyed impartially. </p>
<p>The impulse toward destruction often seems to override normal inhibitions. Byzantine and Protestant iconoclasts, for example, destroyed images of the mother and child; in most social situations, mothers and children are people we’re urged to safeguard and protect. Symbolic meaning overrode normal social instincts.</p>
<p>It’s a bit scary to witness the primitive instincts – at times the raw violence – that these monuments set in motion on both sides of the issue. Clearly, they touch on social wounds that have been festering for centuries, and they’ve eliciting a divergent range of responses among historians, politicians and the public.</p>
<p>One would hope that the controversy can be one that will lead not just to destruction or to erasure of history, but to thoughtful reexamination and acknowledgment of the injustices and sores of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Adams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Over the course of human history, symbols and monuments have invoked violent impulses and destruction.Henry Adams, Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/829802017-08-27T20:07:48Z2017-08-27T20:07:48ZMonumental errors: how Australia can fix its racist colonial statues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183394/original/file-20170825-28115-1nebnya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aboriginal dancers from Pinjarra perform at the unveiling of the counter-memorial in Esplanade Park, Fremantle, April 9 1994. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Bruce Scates</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>War memorials are a feature of the Australian landscape. Obelisk and arch, broken pillar and stone statue remind us of the crippling loss a young nation faced in campaigns overseas. But where are the monuments to conflicts fought in our own country – a brutal war of dispossession that left deep and enduring scars on countless communities? </p>
<p>As the recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-politics-of-public-monuments-its-time-australians-looked-at-what-and-whom-we-commemorate-82751">debate over Australian statues</a> demonstrates, sanitised symbols of violence and dispossession have long stood unchallenged in the heart of our towns and cities. By occupying civic space they serve to legitimise narratives of conquest and dispossession, arguably colonising minds in the same ways white “settlers” seized vast tracts of territory.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-politics-of-public-monuments-its-time-australians-looked-at-what-and-whom-we-commemorate-82751">The politics of public monuments: it's time Australians looked at what, and whom, we commemorate</a>
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<p>Stan Grant has called for a Sydney statue of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-18/america-tears-down-its-racist-history-we-ignore-ours-stan-grant/8821662">James Cook</a> that claims Cook “discovered” Australia to be corrected. Others have called for the renaming of buildings and public spaces named after <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/clover-moore-refers-concerns-about-macquarie-statue--to-indigenous-panel-20170822-gy1jn4.html">Lachlan Macquarie</a> and people associated with <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-24/townsville-statue-whitewash-slave-history-islanders-say/8838984">Queensland’s slaving</a> (known as “blackbirding”) history. </p>
<p>In response, Prime Minister <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/25/changing-colonial-statues-is-stalinist-says-malcolm-turnbull">Malcolm Turnbull</a>, along with other politicians and commentator <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/andrew-bolt-blanking-history-a-sign-of-true-totalitarian/news-story/d1ba156061612b581b6aaae100a91b53">Andrew Bolt</a>, have labelled these calls to alter monuments “Stalinist”. </p>
<p>In debating the place “explorers” or “blackbirders” might occupy in civic space, Australians face a choice in how we engage with a past that is painful, multivocal and complex. White Australians raised such memorials as tributes to their colonial pasts; other than as subjects, there was no place for Indigenous peoples.</p>
<p>Should politicians, bureaucrats or the apologists for our country’s racist past decide the fate of these memorials today? Or can this debate empower previously displaced voices? These monuments have maligned and marginalised first nations’ peoples from the first day they were erected. And they stand, after all, on land whose sovereignty was never surrendered.</p>
<p>Indigenous communities have confronted such challenges before. And they have acted with courage, wisdom and generosity. In Fremantle, Western Australia, a monument that celebrated the racism that mars Australia’s past has today become a symbol of dialogue and reconciliation. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WrtUmyT4hxM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Susan Carland and Bruce Scates discuss Australia’s frontier conflict.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Revising the past</h2>
<p>The Explorers’ Monument in Fremantle was unveiled in 1913 to commemorate three white explorers – Frederick Panter, James Harding and William Goldwyer – who were killed in the far northwest in 1864. For generations it stood unquestioned in the centre of the Esplanade Reserve in Fremantle, enshrining a pioneer myth writ deep in Australian history. </p>
<p>A series of plaques circling the monument claimed that the explorers were attacked at night and “killed in their sleep” by “treacherous natives”. The land where they died is portrayed as hostile and alien: a “terra incognita”. Aboriginal people are described as savages, the whites as “intrepid pioneers”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183415/original/file-20170825-28115-1du1qp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183415/original/file-20170825-28115-1du1qp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183415/original/file-20170825-28115-1du1qp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183415/original/file-20170825-28115-1du1qp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183415/original/file-20170825-28115-1du1qp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183415/original/file-20170825-28115-1du1qp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183415/original/file-20170825-28115-1du1qp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183415/original/file-20170825-28115-1du1qp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The orignal plaque on the Explorers’ Monument.</span>
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<p>Other features of the monument are stridently belligerent. An imposing bust pays tribute to Maitland Brown, “leader of the government search and punitive expedition” who carried the explorers’ remains back with him to Fremantle. Brown’s expedition ended in the massacre of around 20 Aboriginal people; mounted and well armed, none of his party were killed or wounded.</p>
<p>In 1994, the United Nations Year of Indigenous Peoples, a counter-memorial was set in the monument’s base. Elders from Bidyadanga (formally La Grange) unveiled a new plaque outlining the history of provocation that led to the explorers’ deaths. It was a striking instance of what scholars call “dialogical memorialisation”, where one view of the past takes issue with another and history is seen, not as some final statement, but a contingent and contested narrative. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183411/original/file-20170825-18734-8f5h3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183411/original/file-20170825-18734-8f5h3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183411/original/file-20170825-18734-8f5h3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183411/original/file-20170825-18734-8f5h3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183411/original/file-20170825-18734-8f5h3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183411/original/file-20170825-18734-8f5h3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183411/original/file-20170825-18734-8f5h3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183411/original/file-20170825-18734-8f5h3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The plaque added to the Explorers’ Monument in 1994.</span>
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<p>Equally importantly, the plaque acknowledges the right of Indigenous people to defend their traditional lands and solemnly commemorates “all those Aboriginal people who died during the invasion of their country”. The dedication service ended as Aboriginal people scattered dust from the site of the massacre and two white children laid wreaths of flowers decked in Aboriginal colours.</p>
<p>The Explorers’ Monument carried the same inscription chiselled on war memorials the length and breadth of our country. “Lest we forget” was the chilling phrase chosen to commemorate Panter, Harding and Goldwyer in 1913, and those words back then were an incitement to racial hatred. </p>
<p>Over 80 years later, the people of Bidyadanga and the Baldja network in Fremantle added “lest we forget” to their counter-inscription. This invites us to widen the ambit of remembrance and recognise the common tragedies that attended the so-called settlement of Australia. </p>
<h2>Authorised and unauthorised history</h2>
<p>In the United States, symbols of the nation’s racist past have been the flash points of violent confrontations, such as in <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-charlottesville-to-nazi-germany-sometimes-monuments-have-to-fall-82643">Charlottesville</a>. Protesters demand the removal of statues that celebrate slave owners and white supremacists. Right-wing militia groups rally to their defence. </p>
<p>Similar debates have emerged elsewhere. Should great centres of learning like Oxford pay tribute to <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-students-toppled-rhodes-but-they-cant-get-rid-of-zuma-53996">Cecil Rhodes</a>, a man who pioneered the policies of apartheid? </p>
<p>Can a democracy enshrine the advocates of racial, sexual or religious discrimination, or peaceful communities honour those who carpet-bombed Europe? In each case, statues and memorials stand at the heart of these controversies. Once the meanings of monuments were thought to be set in stone; now they crumble in the relentless critique of history.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fair-game-the-audacity-of-heritier-lumumba-82898">Fair Game? The audacity of Héritier Lumumba</a>
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<p>Would those opposing the altering of Australia’s colonial statues have also opposed the demolition of the Berlin Wall, or the toppling of statues of Saddam Hassein? In monuments, as in written histories, some narratives are authorised, others denied or disputed. </p>
<p>And such critique raises deeper questions, interrogating the very nature of history as a scholarly discipline. Does history cease to exist when a memorial is removed from public view and civic sanction – or is that act of removal, a forceful repudiation of the past, itself an act of choice and agency in history?</p>
<p>Ray Minniecon was an Aboriginal student at Murdoch University who led the liaison with Indigenous communities. “Monuments,” he said on the day Fremantle’s counter-memorial was unveiled, “are not just a window into our past; they are a window into ourselves.” We can choose. We may cling to the racism and hatreds of the past or make our own commitment to what the <a href="https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/2017-05/Uluru_Statement_From_The_Heart_0.PDF">constitutional convention at Uluru</a> aptly dubbed “truth telling”. </p>
<p>Perhaps, at this critical juncture in our history, Fremantle suggests the way forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Charles Scates does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Fremantle monument to three white explorers was revised in 1994 to acknowledge the violence committed against Indigenous owners. As Australia struggles to reconcile its racist past, perhaps this monument shows a way forward.Bruce Charles Scates, Professor of History, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/826652017-08-25T13:31:16Z2017-08-25T13:31:16ZRobert E Lee, George Washington and the trouble with the American pantheon<p>When the US president, Donald Trump, was asked to clarify his position on the violence that unfolded in <a href="https://theconversation.com/global/topics/charlottesville-attack-41864">Charlottesville</a>, Virginia during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York, he poured gasoline on a raging fire. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/15/politics/read-president-trumps-q-and-a-at-trump-tower/index.html">comment</a> about the historical monument to Confederate general Robert E Lee, which had become a flashpoint in the protests, Trump remarked:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This week it’s Robert E Lee … I wonder is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?</p>
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<p>For years, a debate about Confederate monuments has been growing in intensity, setting protesters and city counsellors around the country against activists who see the monuments to southern civil war heroes as a part of the region’s heritage – even though the majority of them were erected <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/whoseheritage_splc.pdf">long after the war</a>. Indeed, most were put up around the beginning of the 20th century, as African-American disfranchisement began to well and truly bite across the country and in the 1950s and 1960s, largely in reaction to the civil rights movement and desegregation. Though they might hold a civil war figure aloft, monuments to the Confederacy commemorate white supremacy in marble. This is the message. The rest is historical window dressing.</p>
<p>A few of these statues make this fact plain. Most do not. All of them trade in a historical bait and switch. The statues memorialising the Confederacy gave segregationists the historical justification they needed to act, while at the same time allowing them to cast their efforts in a regional history of lost causes rather than white supremacy and the perpetuation of slavery.</p>
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<p>But Trump’s stance also raise questions about not so much whether monuments ought to be taken down, but the company that Robert E Lee keeps in the pantheon of the republic’s most important civic icons. Here too there are problems, but not only the ones you might think.</p>
<p>On the surface, the president’s remarks make no sense to anyone who has read in any depth about American history. Thomas Jefferson wrote the document that set the American colonies down the road to independence. He was a president, as was George Washington. <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-virginia-the-history-of-the-statue-at-the-centre-of-violent-unrest-82476">Lee</a> was a decorated soldier – but a founding father he was not. He renounced his citizenship, joined a cause to break up the Union and stood at the head of the Army of Northern Virginia which inflicted incredible damage on the United States and killed tens of thousands of American soldiers. Washington and Jefferson helped to build the republic. Lee was out to destroy it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Washington’s face on Mount Rushmore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/volvob12b/31098162420/in/photolist-Po3df9-dZx56C-94LU4W-c4WZeL-NpRea-dB2Jg-9zkUxC-KEtQE-a1yTcv-9xpBLq-azPTqV-4nokJ-qb4pWh-dgztGa-dWs5n1-dWs8Ko-7Q6kfL-WxhDtC-9p5HEC-5SxQyQ-5SxSoU-4k4xLN-4k4zMJ-7jj7yd-hPtQzM-5SxTCW-5SxQh9-8U4863-9p5J3W-KDrm8-2zbu49-5Stznv-2nddMo-5SxMS3-8MzdYq-4k4xhy-cxDdzW-8PKMg4-4k4yuG-bBycax-9A3qGD-5SxS5N-4k4sKh-bbV5ST-677ePw-4A8pAV-5CEZWw-bBycHF-fvrjXU-ff2NcP">Bernard Spragg</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, one of the odd and understudied by-products of the war is that, despite the all-consuming talk of treason and loyalty during and immediately following the conflict, by the later decades of the century former Confederate citizens could wrap themselves in the American flag and still erect monuments to their Confederate heroes, all without irony or sanction from the rest of the country.</p>
<p>For a good many Americans, Lee is held up as a national hero – even if he had a hand in almost tearing the republic to pieces. The historical narrative that wraps Lee, Washington and all the rest into one whole is a story of misdirection. It is a memory of the war that few who survived the conflict would have recognised. And it is certainly not how those who were slaves when the war began remembered it.</p>
<h2>An accidental challenge</h2>
<p>But there is more to think about here. By associating Lee, Washington and Jefferson, Trump made an unintended but instructive point about the problem of whiteness, slavery and power in American history more broadly.</p>
<p>For all of the plaudits historians and the broader public throw at the feet of the so-called founding fathers, there is something to the idea that by holding them up and casting aspersions on Lee, we are somehow scrubbing up the former, and heaping scorn on the latter. The fact remains that most of the most powerful Americans in the first century of the republic’s history traded in slaves or profited from their labour. Few institutions were untouched by slavery’s influence. Though white nationalists might deny it, it is difficult to point on a map to any part of the United States that was not settled, improved or made profitable through the labour of African Americans in chains.</p>
<p>Trump was by no means out to make this point, but in his profound desire to lash out at his enemies and expose their weaknesses, his words inadvertently ought to force historians and the broader public to think again – and think again a lot harder – at the historical assumptions we make. No monument erected or destroyed can obscure the reality that racism remains one of the most powerful markers in American society. A darker reckoning with the nation’s history is sorely needed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82665/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erik Mathisen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In defending white nationalists in Charlottesville, Donald Trump took aim at the founding fathers.Erik Mathisen, Teaching Fellow, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/829342017-08-24T11:13:37Z2017-08-24T11:13:37ZA museum of Confederate statues could help end the American Civil War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183145/original/file-20170823-13316-1pvsjhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fischerfotos/7826449982/in/photolist-cVAAUN-XyUyRr-XyV9xV-Wvhtg9-Xb5Pao-vRTfRz-RTDxee-dPMtyx-9i7wzt-XyUyoT-XH2zsE-XM6A34-UsA9Ek-XyUzNM-9iaivd-XyVc7n-XM7geF-Wvii17-UpJv8J-nuULzw-XyV6L2-UpGDNJ-CNfRwC-UsAbUk-XM7t6r-xJ3EMb-pwBXZk-Mddnme-UpGByo-U4TrKw-r4jQTR-xcsL6o-WviiJb-WvhPnG-KqLmcF-UAmcUC-XyULmR-U4TuE9-rLcpMf-DHESS7-wVigCU-UpHTbo-UAkyV7-wDqAZE-wVicBY-Lnh4PZ-8m3rnc-8m6AZW-8m3rti-SWuwh4">Mark Fischer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Across America, bronze rebels are falling. Confederate monuments have come down in <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/05/20/529232823/with-lee-statues-removal-another-battle-of-new-orleans-comes-to-a-close">New Orleans</a>, Louisiana, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/baltimore-begins-taking-down-confederate-statues/2017/08/16/f32aa26e-8265-11e7-b359-15a3617c767b_story.html?utm_term=.df604688ef9c">Baltimore</a>, Maryland, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/8-now-charged-in-toppling-of-durham-n-c-confederate-statue/">Durham</a>, North Carolina, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/us/ut-austin-confederate-statues-removed/index.html">Austin</a>, Texas and even <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hollywood-forever-monument-20170815-story.html">Hollywood</a>, California. And over the coming weeks, this list will almost certainly grow.</p>
<p>This campaign has prompted a fierce debate about the politics of history, from the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/trump-tweet-confederate-statues/index.html">babbling myopia</a> of Donald Trump to more serious proposals about what to do with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-to-do-with-confederate-statues-81736">statues</a>. To varying degrees of sophistication, most suggestions have circled around a crucial question: how can we learn from the past without celebrating its ugliest features?</p>
<p>I want to sketch out one possibility.</p>
<p>Rather than scrapping these monuments or packing them away, bring them back into the clear light of day – only this time, in a completely different setting. Collect these fallen Confederates in a vast, outdoor museum space, carefully presented and properly contextualised. If done thoughtfully, such a museum could transform objects of veneration into tools for edification, and move the US one step closer towards a fair reckoning with its past.</p>
<h2>Memories in context</h2>
<p>First and foremost, this museum would require contextualisation in the form of detailed histories for each monument. That would take the sheen off these statues by explaining who these men really were: slaveholders at the helm of a rebellion against the US government. Many of them were large landowners, who amassed fortunes on the backs of the human beings that they owned. In an effort to preserve and extend slavery, they shattered the Union in a war that claimed an estimated 750,000 lives – a higher death toll than all other American military conflicts put together.</p>
<p>But such a museum would need to move well beyond the Civil War and into the Jim Crow era. That’s in fact when the majority of these monuments were <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future">erected</a>. The high-tide of Confederate monument-making took place during the early 20th century. It was synchronous with a wave of legislation designed to disempower African Americans across the South. A second spike in Confederate memorialisation occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, when black people began rolling back some of those exclusions. These monuments represent the reactionary rebuttal to the civil rights movement. Or, to borrow a more recent slogan, it was a white supremacist effort to make the South great again.</p>
<p>With period photographs, audio recordings, and video footage, the museum could document how particular monuments became contested political sites, from the civil rights movement to the present day. Accompanying displays could spotlight prominent national figures, like the perennial presidential candidate <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/14/us/george-wallace-segregation-symbol-dies-at-79.html?mcubz=0">George C. Wallace</a>, who incorporated Confederate iconography into a segregationist and white supremacist platform.</p>
<p>The museum could also bring together more recent objects, like the mangled bronze of Durham’s Confederate monument, famously <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/14/us/confederate-statue-pulled-down-north-carolina-trnd/index.html">torn down</a> by protesters following the events in Charlottesville. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Time/YouTube.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There should also be a recording of the powerful speech delivered by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0jQTHis3f4">Mitch Landrieu</a>, mayor of New Orleans, on the removal of rebel statues from his city. These are reminders of how history informs our present moment.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t0jQTHis3f4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Mitch Landrieu/YouTube.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This would not be a museum to dead Confederates so much as a tribute to the people who stood against their rebellion and its pernicious legacies. To this end, the museum could commission new monuments and memorials to place in conversation with these slaveholding rebels: from the former slaves who took up arms against their masters during the Civil War, to the black leaders of the post-emancipation period, to the champions of the civil rights movement, to the victims of the recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. This, in effect, would be a museum to a century-and-a-half of civil rights struggle.</p>
<p>Confederate monuments and the history they represent were never confined to the South, however. The museum should therefore include a large interactive map to display the location of <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20160421/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy">over 700 Confederate monuments and statues</a>, and indicate which have been removed and which remain in place. </p>
<p>As monuments continue to fall, this annotated map would serve as an important catalogue of America’s evolving commemorative landscape. Visitors might be surprised to learn that, while most of these monuments are concentrated in the former Confederate states, quite a few were erected in the <a href="http://nypost.com/2017/08/18/bronx-community-college-removes-confederate-busts/">North</a> and the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-waite-socal-confederates-20170804-story.html">West</a> as well.</p>
<h2>Drawbacks</h2>
<p>There are, of course, substantial obstacles in the way of such a museum – above and beyond sheer expense. The Smithsonian’s exhibit of the <a href="http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/enola/">Enola Gay</a> – the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima – demonstrated how political firestorms can engulf public history. Some might also worry that any concentration of Confederate monuments could become a pilgrimage site for white supremacists.</p>
<p>But detailed explanations and a proper contextualisation of these statues would hopefully prevent such an outcome. Plus, admission fees (not to mention a strict <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/business/media/charlottesville-tiki-torch-company.html?mcubz=1&_r=0">no-tiki-torch</a> policy) are nice deterrents to large gatherings of racist agitators. To be sure, some white nationalists may still visit such a museum. But they would find little to celebrate in a place that exposes the treason of Confederate leaders and documents the heroism of black activists and their allies.</p>
<p>What to do with these monuments remains an immensely sensitive and often explosive question. A museum could, however, steer a middle path between those who worry about the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/07/27/why-we-need-confederate-monuments/?utm_term=.6696040299fb">erasure of history</a> and those who want relics to white supremacy removed from their literal and figurative pedestals.</p>
<p>The Confederacy surrendered over 150 years ago, but Americans are still fighting over the Civil War. Such a longstanding struggle over historical memory deserves a museum of its own, where relocated statues of Confederate generals can bear witness to the sins of the past and point towards a better future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Waite does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Displaying Confederate statues in a carefully curated museum would help end a toxic debate about the difference between remembering and venerating.Kevin Waite, Assistant Professor of Modern American History, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824432017-08-17T22:56:56Z2017-08-17T22:56:56ZCharlottesville and the politics of fear<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182157/original/file-20170815-26751-1scgwed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Did Trump's rhetoric played a part in radicalizing the far-right protesters in Charlottesville?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Steve Helber</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I have spent nearly 16 years studying how the risk of violence grows in societies around the world and running programs designed to stem the tide. I have seen toxic rhetoric from political leaders result in violence in countries like Iraq and Kenya. </p>
<p>On August 12, the same thing happened in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-virginia-overview.html">Charlottesville</a>, Virginia. The violent clash there came about in part because of a resonance between President Donald Trump’s language and domestic extremist groups who see a doorway open to their goals – goals most Americans have long thought buried for good. </p>
<p>This homegrown horror represents a potentially greater threat than any we face from foreign terrorist groups. Foreign groups can certainly kill, but they have no power to divide our society. That deeper threat belongs to us alone – but the solution is also in our hands. </p>
<h2>Fear and anger make for strong motivation</h2>
<p>Let’s consider how the president’s words have encouraged violence.</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-russia-probe-demeaning-to-our-constitution/article/2630600">quote from Trump</a>, speaking at a rally in West Virginia, predates the angry clash in Charlottesville by just nine days:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“They can’t beat us at the voting booths, so they’re trying to cheat you out of the future and the future that you want. They’re trying to cheat you out of the leadership you want with a fake story that is demeaning to all of us, and most importantly, demeaning to our country and demeaning to our Constitution.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The counterprotesters in Charlottesville – <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/13/543175919/violence-in-charlottesville-claims-3-victims">one of whom was killed</a> – are implicitly among the “they” in this speech. </p>
<p>Fear and anger defined Trump’s candidacy and continue to define his presidency, as in other <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/watch-live-trump-speaks-campaign-rally-huntington-west-virginia/">recent</a> speeches condemning the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html?_r=0">media</a>, the president’s political <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/04/politics/trump-mueller-political-argument/index.html">opponents</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/20/i-think-islam-hates-us-a-timeline-of-trumps-comments-about-islam-and-muslims/?utm_term=.2ecfdee2fdcb">immigrants</a> and the <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/23/killing-trump-lefts-violent-assault-on-american-president.html">left</a>. </p>
<p>The language Trump uses resembles <a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Maduro-Blasts-CIA-Plot-Demands-Response-from-Colombia-Mexico--20170724-0031.html">the language</a> Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is currently using to galvanize anti-protest violence, declaring his willingness to take up arms in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/lawmakers-injured-in-violent-attack-on-venezuelan-assembly/532749/">patriotic terms</a>: “If Venezuela was plunged into chaos and violence and the Bolivarian Revolution destroyed, we would go to combat… We would never give up, and what couldn’t be done with votes, we would do with weapons.” Trump’s language also echoes language right-wing extremist and white supremacist groups use to define the conditions under which violence – toward the government or towards other citizens they see as enemies – becomes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYGUfWC84wg">legitimate</a> in <a href="https://www.oathkeepers.org/critical-warning-to-u-s-military-and-federal-leo-do-not-follow-orders-to-waco-ammon-bundy-occupation-in-oregon-or-you-risk-starting-a-civil-war/">their worldview</a>. </p>
<p>Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t come out of nowhere. Going back at least to the “southern strategy” in the 1960s, the GOP has spent decades <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/130039/southern-strategy-made-donald-trump-possible">mobilizing</a> fear and anger. As candidates, Republican presidents like <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/jeb-bush-willie-horton-118061">George H.W. Bush</a> leveraged fear to secure votes from the white, Christian, male and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/02/this-astonishing-chart-shows-how-republicans-are-an-endangered-species/">ideologically extreme</a> demographic to offset the party’s growing distance from an increasingly diverse and progressive American society. Trump’s use of the same tropes is not an aberration, but the culmination of this tactic. </p>
<p>By mirroring extremists’ language, Trump encourages groups already primed for violence by suggesting that the enemy and the situation they have prepared for are present here and now. By refusing to clearly denounce <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/video/david-duke-says-he-was-at-charlottesville-rally-to-fulfill-promise-of-trump-1023420483642">the extremists</a> – and suggesting a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-defends-organizers-of-white-supremacist-rally-in-charlottesville/2017/08/15/de01ff66-81f9-11e7-902a-2a9f2d808496_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">moral equivalency</a> between right-wing violence and counterprotesters – he further excuses and reinforces the idea that the right’s violence is defensible, honorable and legitimate.</p>
<h2>The patriot paradox</h2>
<p>We’ve heard this language from within the “<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/timeline-history-militias-america/">patriot movement</a>” for a long time. </p>
<p>Consider <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh">the following words</a>, spoken by Timothy McVeigh in an interview explaining why he bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and wounding nearly 700 more.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly. It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I will.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Every extremist group in history describes its own violence as the legitimate response to a threat that was forced on them. In a South African white supremacist paramilitary training camp, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3038508/Preparing-race-war-South-African-white-supremacist-bootcamps-training-thousands-youths-fight-blacks-create-apartheid-state.html">recruits are told</a> “South Africa is bleeding… And this is why we have to train our people to be prepared. There’s millions and millions of blacks around you, smothering you… and killing you… So you have to implement certain systems to survive…” This is the same sentiment reflected in the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/18/dylann-roof-rhodesian-flag_n_7616752.html">Rhodesian flag</a> worn by the white supremacist Dylann Roof, convicted of killing nine at an African-American church in South Carolina. </p>
<p>When right-wing extremists and white supremacists view Trump critics, “liberals” and progressive protesters as enemies of the state – and therefore legitimate targets – they feel emboldened to demonstrate more overtly. Indeed, Trump’s <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-elites-20170725-story.html">anti-elite</a> accusations and claims that the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html">lying media</a>” is the enemy of the American people hold significantly the same meaning as McVeigh’s words. </p>
<p>American extremist websites exhort the belief that they are <a href="http://www.govtslaves.info/leaked-military-bulletin-labels-patriot-groups-militia-domestic-terrorists/">defending</a> the Constitution, stopping the theft of the political process from the people and resisting takeover by <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/larry-klayman">hostile powers</a>. They draw on <a href="http://www.originalintent.org/edu/patriotmovement.php">the narrative</a> that true Americans are not only able but expected to throw off such oppression. </p>
<p>Even before 20-year-old James Alex Fields <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/james-alex-fields-charlottesville-driver-.html">drove his car</a> into the crowd on August 12, individual <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-challenges-perceptions-of-top-terror-threat.html?_r=0">acts of violence</a> linked to racism and extremist American politics were on the increase. In Trump’s presidency, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/hate-crime-america-muslims-trump-638000">a pattern</a> of increasing hate crimes has continued to grow. </p>
<p>In Charlottesville, white supremacists shouted “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/charlottesville-far-right-crowd-with-torches-encircles-counter-protest-group">Jews will not replace us</a>.” Meanwhile, Eric Trump denounces his father’s critics as “<a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-eric-trump-calls-father-s-critics-not-1496849988-htmlstory.html">not even people</a>.” They’re the same dehumanizing echoes used to justify levels of violence from <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human">cruelty to genocide</a>.</p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>As criticism for Trump’s Charlottesville stance grows, his popularity wanes. The president is becoming increasingly reliant on campaign-style speeches to connect with those who still support him. We must be on guard for the rhetoric of theft and threat, and the implicit call to violence, to intensify. </p>
<p>Many years of experience in dealing with extremism has taught me the threat can be reduced – first and foremost through consistent political involvement by the greatest possible number of people; a strong, united stand against fear and anger; and communication between communities and security providers. </p>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security’s focus on analyzing and countering domestic terrorism, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-extremists-program-exclusiv-idUSKBN15G5VO">dismantled</a> under Trump, should be rebuilt. The October 2016 <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/16_1028_S1_CVE_strategy.pdf">strategy</a> for countering violent extremism, which stresses community policing and inclusive governance, should be expanded and improved as a model for cities and states as well as the nation. </p>
<p>Political radicalism isn’t inherently bad. Indeed, the American Revolution wouldn’t have happened without it. The violence perpetrated by domestic radicals, however, cannot be condoned. A former IRA soldier in Northern Ireland once told me of the peace process there, “just because a wave breaks on the beach doesn’t mean the tide isn’t going out.” For Americans horrified at this violence, it’s important to remember that there is no endpoint in politics – only process. What’s wrong now can be changed.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-america-domestic-extremists-are-a-bigger-risk-than-foreign-terrorism-58841">an article</a> originally published on May 31, 2016.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Alpher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump is a master of using anger to motivate his base. An anti-terrorism researcher explains how to stem the tide.David Alpher, Adjunct Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/826432017-08-17T05:14:58Z2017-08-17T05:14:58ZFrom Charlottesville to Nazi Germany, sometimes monuments have to fall<p>The recent turmoil over the removal of Confederate statues in the United States invites us to think about the importance of monuments and historical memory worldwide. It also invites us to ask, should statues that represent dark episodes in a country’s history be removed? Or should they be kept as reminders of trauma? </p>
<p>The taking down of a statue of <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-virginia-the-history-of-the-statue-at-the-centre-of-violent-unrest-82476">Confederate icon</a> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/robert-e-lee-confederate-hero-heart-charlottesville-unrest-statues/">General Robert E. Lee</a> in Charlottesville, Virginia, encouraged groups of neo-Nazis and white nationalists to protest. These extremist groups claimed the decision was a direct attack on their cultural identity and an effort to rewrite history. As we now know, this led to <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/charlottesville-attack-170813081045115.html">violent clashes</a> between these groups and counter-protestors, and the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-17/charlottesville-heather-heyer-mum-says-legacy-just-beginning/8815520">death of one young woman</a>. It has also led to an unprecedented presidential crisis due to President Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-and-race-decades-of-fueling-divisions/2017/08/16/5fb3cd7c-8296-11e7-b359-15a3617c767b_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumprace-936pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.14139997ec7c">ambiguous statements</a> on the matter.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-virginia-the-history-of-the-statue-at-the-centre-of-violent-unrest-82476">Charlottesville, Virginia: the history of the statue at the centre of violent unrest</a>
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<p>Following the Charlottesville violence, the far right (or <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-seeds-of-the-alt-right-americas-emergent-right-wing-populist-movement-69036">alt-right</a>, as it is also known), has planned <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/15/us/white-nationalists-protests-tally-trnd/index.html">as many as nine more rallies</a> in the coming days. In Baltimore, Mayor Catherine Pugh decided to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/baltimore-confederate-statues.html?mcubz=0">remove Confederate statues overnight</a>, with no publicity, in an effort to ward off political and racial violence in her city, which has witnessed <a href="https://theconversation.com/baltimores-toxic-slum-housing-and-its-part-in-the-violent-death-of-freddie-gray-40990">riots</a> in the past. Other Confederate monuments are being removed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/16/us/confederate-monuments-removed.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&mtrref=www.nytimes.com">across the country</a>. </p>
<p>Removing Confederate statues in the US is not unprecedented, nor is it an effort to rewrite history. Rather, it demonstrates a deeper understanding of the nation’s troubled history. For decades, the productive capacity of the southern US depended on the forced migration of people from Africa and their slave labour. The void left by the Confederate monuments speaks even louder than the statues themselves, as the issue of race has gained currency there today. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Confederate statue removed overnight in Baltimore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/JIM LO SCALZO</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>The making of meaning</h2>
<p>A monument, like the one to General Lee, is a material acknowledgement of a person’s virtue and contribution to the common good. Once history books are written and the voices of victims of dark episodes such as slavery have been heard, it is pertinent to reconsider the moral standing of figures who might have once been considered heroes and are depicted in statues. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Saddam Hussein’s statue falls in 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/world/europe/franco-statue-barcelona-spain.html">In Spain</a>, after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, many towns with statues of Franco decided to remove them. The last Franco monument was removed from the mainland in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/18/franco-statue-spain">2008</a>. The removal of these monuments <a href="https://www.expatica.com/es/news/Hundreds-protest-against-Franco-statue-removal_127657.html">was also met with the ire of conservative groups</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most famous example of a monument’s removal for political reasons was the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd-M3Y-IprU">spectacular toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue</a> in Firdos Square in Baghdad in 2003. Symbolically, it marked the end of Iraq’s Baath dictatorship. This event, staged by the US Army and watched in real-time worldwide, represented the end of the regime even more than Saddam’s actual death by hanging in <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/30/hussein/index.html">2006</a>.</p>
<h2>Learning from the past</h2>
<p>We keep the things that we love the most, but sometimes we also keep the things that reminds us about the horror of the past. Monuments can echo the traumatic events that have shaped our culture, history and civilisation. </p>
<p>A famous example is <a href="http://www.mementopark.hu/">Memento Park</a> in the outskirts of Budapest in Hungary, where a number of removed statues from the Communist period are kept for visitors to see them and learn about the horrors of the Soviet years. Some also appreciate them as aesthetic objects or a tourist attraction. </p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-tourists-go-to-sites-associated-with-death-and-suffering-81015">Why tourists go to sites associated with death and suffering</a>
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<p>According to the Gregorian dictum, written 1400 years ago by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I">Pope Gregory the Great</a>: images should not be destroyed because they are the books of the illiterate. We learn the mistakes of our past from the images that we make, in the present, of that troublesome past. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Memento Park in Hungary which preserves monuments from the country’s communist period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia/Szoborpark</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>When the past becomes poisonous</h2>
<p>But some statues have to be removed as a cathartic event, as in the <a href="https://twitter.com/rhodesmustfall?lang=en">#RhodesMustFall</a> movement in South Africa. At first, it demanded the removal of some statues of Cecil Rhodes, a notorious white supremacist and British imperialist, but the movement became so powerful that it eventually sparked <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-students-toppled-rhodes-but-they-cant-get-rid-of-zuma-53996">demands for the fall of South African head of state, Jacob Zuma</a>. Removing the statues relieved the accumulated social tensions. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FTodK24KG6E?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Some statues need to be removed because of their embodiment of venomous ideologies, such as Nazism. For this reason, many symbols of Nazism <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTodK24KG6E">such as the big swastika in the Zepellinfeld in Nuremberg</a> were completely destroyed after the second world war in Germany. After all, images can work as didactic devices.</p>
<p>Perhaps Charlottesville is the first of many cases in which societies will reevaluate past atrocities. Regardless of the outcome, it’s clear that monuments and statues will sometimes help determine the course of history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The violence sparked by the removal of Confederate statues in the US shows the ideas that collect around historical monuments. Sometimes it’s better to remove them; yet they can be an important way of remembering trauma.Jose Antonio Gonzalez Zarandona, Associate Research Fellow, Heritage Destruction Specialist, Deakin UniversityCésar Albarrán-Torres, Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/817362017-08-11T00:59:41Z2017-08-11T00:59:41ZWhat to do with Confederate statues?<p>Could Russia teach us something about how to deal with difficult aspects of our national history?</p>
<p>Many places in the South – from New Orleans to Louisville – are in the process of bringing down statues that glorify the Confederacy. That process raises questions about what to do with these remnants of the past. Do we just toss them into the ash bin of history, purging them as if they never existed? </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/hand-of-the-past-in-contemporary-southern-politics/oclc/952732130&referer=brief_results">a student of southern politics</a> who recently traveled to Moscow, I wondered if we can look to the Russians and how they have treated their Soviet past. The situations are not perfectly analogous. Many Russian people lived through the Soviet experience. Not so for the Confederacy. That said, in both cases, there is the question of whether – and how – to purge the past.</p>
<h2>From propaganda to kitsch</h2>
<p>In Moscow, and in the former Soviet Union in general, there is Soviet detritus all over the place. Hammers and sickles are chiseled into buildings, bridges and other infrastructure. Sculptures of happy, heroic soldiers, workers and farmers sit on the platforms in the Moscow metro. Seven massive “Stalin buildings” dot the city. </p>
<p>The Russians have done more than just tolerate these leftovers. All the propaganda that the Soviets used to produce and disseminate – and there was a lot of it – is now kitsch. Kiosks sell Soviet T-shirts next to matryoshka dolls and amber jewelry as genuine Russian souvenirs. As one Russian gentleman said to me, “It’s our past and we embrace it. We lived it. We can’t just wish it away.”</p>
<p>It would not be very practical to knock down the buildings Stalin helped to build or hammer out all those hammers and sickles.</p>
<p>Statues, however, have no practical purpose and can be taken care of rather easily. Moscow has removed many of them from public space. It was <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1991-08-23/news/mn-979_1_kgb-headquarters">one of the first impulses</a> the Russian people had after the fall of the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>What is instructive is what the Muscovites have done with their statues, collecting them in a sculpture garden and giving them historical context. </p>
<h2>A grove of Lenin statues</h2>
<p>The statues and monuments now reside together in a section of MUSEON Arts Park, a lovely green space next to Gorky Park. MUSEON is also known as the Fallen Monument Park, though “felled monuments” would be the more appropriate name. The park contains more than just felled Soviets. There are hundreds of other pieces sprinkled through the park. But walking through the grove of Lenin statues, sitting in the shade of a monumental Soviet coat of arms, or posing next to a large bust of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/897651216">Leonid Brezhnev</a> or <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mikhail-Ivanovich-Kalinin">Mikhail Kalinin</a> is the thrill for people like me.</p>
<p>Each statue or set of statues is accompanied by a panel that informs the viewer about the work, its composition and the history of its display. Notably, there is little about the leader being portrayed in the text. Each description ends with, “By the decree of the Moscow City Council of People Representatives of Oct. 24, 1991, the monument was dismantled and placed in the MUSEON Arts Park exposition. The work is historically and culturally significant, being the memorial construction of the soviet era, on the themes of politics and ideology.” The point, of course, is that the Moscow city council is careful to state that the display is not intended to glorify the past, but to document it. </p>
<p>What is even more powerful is how the statues are displayed. In some ways, the arrangements are reminiscent of a cemetery. White, granite “tombstones” line a path, an appropriate metaphor for the Soviet regime. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181702/original/file-20170810-20679-1csy3ht.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181702/original/file-20170810-20679-1csy3ht.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181702/original/file-20170810-20679-1csy3ht.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181702/original/file-20170810-20679-1csy3ht.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181702/original/file-20170810-20679-1csy3ht.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181702/original/file-20170810-20679-1csy3ht.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181702/original/file-20170810-20679-1csy3ht.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181702/original/file-20170810-20679-1csy3ht.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stalin and his witnesses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Glaser</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is the large statue of Josef Stalin, however, that is most striking. Stalin has lost his nose and is in sad shape. Behind him is a monument to the “Victims to the Totalitarian Regime.” The monument is a wall comprising stone heads cocked at different angles. The heads are held in place by a grid of bars and barbed wire that evoke a prison camp. Hundreds of these victims stare at Stalin. Indeed, because of their placement, one cannot look at him without looking at them. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181703/original/file-20170810-27649-1c9sra4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181703/original/file-20170810-27649-1c9sra4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181703/original/file-20170810-27649-1c9sra4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181703/original/file-20170810-27649-1c9sra4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181703/original/file-20170810-27649-1c9sra4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181703/original/file-20170810-27649-1c9sra4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181703/original/file-20170810-27649-1c9sra4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181703/original/file-20170810-27649-1c9sra4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sakharov.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Moreover, in front of Stalin is a contemporary statue of Russian physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/927964341">Andrei Sakharov</a>, one of the most notable dissidents of the Soviet era. The statue of Sakharov is seated, arms behind his back, legs and feet locked together, and head upturned to the sky. Is he staring at the stars, not an unreasonable thing for a scientist or a disarmament activist to do, or can he just not bear to look at Stalin directly in front of him? And what about those arms stretched behind his back, one of them twisted and unnatural, fist in a ball? Is Sakharov being detained, or tortured? That interpretation is suggested by the statue of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/973835787">Felix Dzerzhinsky</a>, the founder of the KGB, who faces Sakharov about 50 yards away. It is quite delicious to see a dog passing by and marking “Iron Felix.” Perhaps Sakharov is just having a good laugh. </p>
<p>Why do these scenes, these dead Soviet statues, work so well? I would assert that by locating them together, they can be put into “historical and cultural” context, as the markers suggest. Moreover, through strategic curation, these statues have been put into dialogue with each other and with the contemporary sculptures around them and been given new meaning. The statues in their old lives were meant to honor and glorify the Soviet leaders and their regime. In their new life, they have been turned into art. As pieces of art, their meaning can be changed or supplemented by how the viewer interprets them. </p>
<p>This suggests there would be real value to bringing felled Confederate statues together in one place. Putting them into historical context, they can give commentary on the Confederacy, the Civil War, slavery, Jim Crow, massive resistance and even present-day politics. And locating these statues with other monuments offers all kinds of opportunity to tell the whole story of the South.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Glaser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of southern politics finds inspiration in an unexpected place.James Glaser, Professor, Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/780202017-06-05T01:03:54Z2017-06-05T01:03:54ZWhy taking down Confederate memorials is only a first step<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172057/original/file-20170602-20605-97655i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is removed on Friday, May 19, 2017, from Lee Circle in New Orleans.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Scott Threlkeld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently the city of New Orleans <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/05/20/529232823/with-lee-statues-removal-another-battle-of-new-orleans-comes-to-a-close">removed several Confederate monuments</a> from a prominent, downtown location. The decision to remove these memorials has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/29/politics/baltimore-mayor-catherine-pugh-confederate-monuments/">touched off a debate</a> throughout several other major U.S. cities who have memorials dedicated to the Confederacy. While critics of the removal say <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/are-removing-confederate-monuments-erasing-history-n750526">the effort erases history</a>, <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2017/04/25/new-orleans-wrong-remove-confederate-monuments/">supporters argue</a> that these memorials celebrate racism and memorialize white supremacy. </p>
<p>We are scholars of memory and cultural landscape. Our work shows that challenging Confederate symbols that legitimize white supremacy is certainly the right thing to do because of the historic legacies of racism they represent. However, taking down Confederate symbols cannot just be a feel-good moment or a substitute for the hard work of racial reconciliation and understanding to advance justice. </p>
<h2>Symbols of Jim Crow era</h2>
<p>Monuments and other commemorative sites <a href="http://sundown.tougaloo.edu/liesacrossamerica.php">tell at least two stories</a>, according to sociologist <a href="http://sundown.tougaloo.edu/">James Loewen</a>. The first is the story of the people and events commemorated by the memorial. The other is a deeper tale of how the monument was created, by whom and for what political purpose. </p>
<p>Memorials, thus, are shaped by a broad range of political, economic and social relationships. For example, the contested Confederate memorials of New Orleans, along with those in many other cities, were dedicated during a Jim Crow era in which <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/the-stubborn-persistence-of-confederate-monuments/479751/">whites actively discriminated</a> against African-Americans.</p>
<p>In this respect, the monuments to the Confederacy in New Orleans and many other cities are doubly problematic. They not only publicly honor the Confederacy, but also are a symbol of an era that saw the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/18.2.7">continuation of institutionalized racism</a> and black disenfranchisement. During the era of segregation white elites employed these statues to take advantage of the racial anxieties of poor whites and to remind civil rights-seeking black communities of who really mattered and belonged (and who did not) in the city. </p>
<p>As New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/05/23/read_mitch_landrieu_s_confederate_monuments_speech.html">recently stated in a speech</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Can you look into that young [African-American] girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too? We all know the answer to these very simple questions. When you look into this child’s eyes is the moment when the searing truth comes into focus for us. This is the moment when we know what is right and what we must do. We can’t walk away from this truth.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What Mitch Landrieu recognizes is a fact that many contemporary scholars have known for some time: Memorials can and do <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8306.9303008">exact a painful toll</a> on the sense of belonging and place of African-Americans in the American landscape. Simply taking down the memorials to the Confederacy is not the same as creating a society in which all people – regardless of color, religion, gender or sexuality – are able to live out their limitless potential.</p>
<h2>Building a community’s capacity</h2>
<p>Our own work suggests that <a href="http://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2016.0003">“memory work,”</a> the necessary labor of coming to grips with the stories of past traumas like racism and its wounds, is a key component of healing. </p>
<p>Memory work is building the capacity of a community to recover from past injustices. This capacity-building needs to recognize not only those injustices but also how they continue to have an impact on inequality today. Scholar <a href="https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/karen-till">Karen Till</a> argues that it needs to be <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629811001806">rooted in activities</a> such as truth commissions, collecting oral histories, museum exhibitions, or public performances and art that help connect a community’s history to contemporary inequality. So, the removal of the Confederate memorials is an important first step, but it cannot end there. </p>
<p>Memory work also means that addressing racial injustices takes sustained heavy lifting. And the removal of Confederate monuments cannot be mistaken for a solution for longstanding racial inequality. To understand, let’s look more closely at New Orleans – which brings together two cities – <a href="http://cfed.org/assets/pdfs/Racial_Wealth_Divide_in_New_Orleans_RWDI.pdf">one white and one black</a>. </p>
<p>The white city is relatively wealthy, while in the African-American city 30 percent of black households are under the poverty line (compared to 4.9 percent of white households). In addition, these disparities have led to gentrification and the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2014.961359">disappearing of many black communities</a>. This is changing not only the historic makeup of the city, but also its cultural landscape. As Geographer <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41412796?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Clyde Woods</a> notes, the civil rights movement is <a href="http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/index/development_drowned_and_reborn">“unfinished business”</a> in New Orleans. This is true for the rest of United States as well. </p>
<h2>Truth and reconciliation commission</h2>
<p>Bringing about commemorative reform without beginning this broader work of remembering and recovering from white supremacy runs a great risk of <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/214306">perpetuating the tradition of manipulating memorial symbols</a> for political advantage and expediency. </p>
<p>We suggest that cities such as New Orleans follow the lead of a growing number of cities in organizing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/dealing-with-hate-can-americas-truth-and-reconciliation-commissions-help-73170">truth and reconciliation commission</a> to examine the material, social and symbolic consequences of the reality of racism and racial inequality. </p>
<p>These commissions would help engage in memory work and the healing of historic wounds – something much-needed today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Monuments to the Confederacy in New Orleans and many other cities are problematic. But a mere erasure will not address the issues around racism and racial inequality.Joshua F.J. Inwood, Associate Professor of Geography Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn StateDerek H. Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.