tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/robert-e-lee-statue-41889/articlesRobert E. Lee statue – 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>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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>
<figure class="align-left ">
<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">
<figcaption>
<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>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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/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/1736252022-02-15T13:49:16Z2022-02-15T13:49:16ZOld statues of Confederate generals are slowly disappearing – will monuments honoring people of color replace them?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445505/original/file-20220209-13-1pvibsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=751%2C60%2C3722%2C4412&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The monument 'Rumors of War' depicts a young African American in urban streetwear sitting atop a horse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-monument-rumors-of-war-is-unveiled-in-times-square-on-news-photo/1177509058">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With most of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/11/23/charlottesville-verdict-live-updates/">legal challenges resolved</a> after the violent <a href="https://time.com/charlottesville-white-nationalist-rally-clashes/">Unite the Right rally</a>, and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/us/charlottesville-confederate-monuments-lee.html">statue of Robert E. Lee removed</a> from its lofty pedestal in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, local lawmakers in December 2021 voted to do the unimaginable – donate the statue to the local <a href="https://jeffschoolheritagecenter.org/">Jefferson School African American Heritage Center</a>. </p>
<p>In turn, the nonprofit cultural group quickly announced its plan to <a href="https://www.cbs19news.com/story/45391966/jefferson-school-will-melt-lee-statue-by-february-2022">melt down the bronze statue</a> and use it as raw material for a new public artwork. What the group plans to build is still an open question, but it clearly will not be another statue honoring the <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lost-cause-the/#start_entry">Lost Cause</a> of the Confederacy, the idea that slavery was a benevolent institution and the Confederate cause was just.</p>
<p>As part of America’s reckoning with its oppressive past, Charlottesville and the rest of the nation face the question of not just which statues and other images should be taken down, but what else – if anything – should be put up in their place.</p>
<p>Statues of Black Americans – and, more importantly, their absence – are an often overlooked barometer of racial progress, hidden in plain sight. Despite their silence, statues are active portraits that can reinforce the value and visibility of Black Americans. The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/global-race-usa-statues-idINKBN2601O5">lack of Black statues</a> sends a clear message of exclusion.</p>
<p>For its part, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center wants to be not only more inclusive in the decision-making involved in determining the future of the Lee statue, but also transformative. </p>
<p>“Our aim is not to destroy an object, it’s to transform it,” <a href="https://www.wvtf.org/2021-12-09/black-heritage-museum-reenvisions-charlottesvilles-statue-of-confederate-gen-robert-e-lee">Andrea Douglas</a>, the center’s executive director, explained. “It’s to use the very raw material of its original making and create something that is more representative of the alleged democratic values of this community, more inclusive of those voices that in 1920 had no ability to engage in the artistic process at all.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Construction workers use heavy-duty chains to remove a statue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee is lifted off its pedestal in Charlottesville, Va.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/statue-of-confederate-general-robert-e-lee-located-in-news-photo/1233936650?adppopup=true">John McDFor their partonnell/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most important, she said, the group wants to “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/us/charlottesville-lee-statue-melted-trnd/index.html">turn it into something that can cause our community to heal</a>.”</p>
<h2>History of exclusion</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, I believe Charlottesville is not the only city in need of healing. With more questions being asked about today’s relevance of Confederate statues, Americans must also ask critical questions about the role of statues in reflecting present morals and future ideals. </p>
<p>While not uncommon to spot statues of accomplished Black athletes, such as <a href="https://www.baltimoreravens.com/video/ray-lewis-statue-unveiled-at-m-t-bank-stadium">Ray Lewis</a> in Baltimore, <a href="https://www.unitedcenter.com/venue/statues/">Michael Jordan</a> in Chicago or <a href="https://www.espn.com/boston/nba/story/_/id/9914066/statue-boston-celtics-great-bill-russell-unveiled-boston">Bill Russell</a> in Boston, it’s much more rare to find Black Americans memorialized outside of the sports and entertainment industries. </p>
<p>With few new exceptions, public and prominent statues of Blacks people are nonexistent. </p>
<p>The public art and history nonprofit group <a href="https://monumentlab.com/">Monument Lab</a> conducted a survey in 2021 of 48,178 statues, plaques, parks and obelisks across the United States. In its report, the group found that less than 1% were of people of color. </p>
<p>Of the top 50 most-represented individuals, the survey revealed that only five are Black or Indigenous people: civil rights leader <a href="https://www.nps.gov/mlkm/index.htm">Martin Luther King Jr.</a> in fourth place; abolitionist and Underground Railroad leader <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/harriet-tubman-statue-philadelphia-black-history-month-exhibit-20220111.html">Harriet Tubman</a> in 24th; Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who led Native American resistance to colonialism, in 25th; Lemhi Shoshone explorer <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/sacagawea-statue-in-portland-or.htm">Sacagawea</a> in 28th; and abolitionist and writer <a href="https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/central-park/monuments/2098">Frederick Douglass</a> in 29th. </p>
<p>More than likely, that percentage will remain the same for the foreseeable future – even with the recent wave of removing controversial statues in 2020 and 2021.</p>
<p>Since May 2020, the <a href="https://www.toppledmonumentsarchive.org/">Toppled Monuments Archive</a> has detailed <a href="https://www.toppledmonumentsarchive.org/the-collective">84 such removals</a> of “colonialist, imperialist, racist and sexist monuments” <a href="https://www.artpapers.org/monumental-collapse/">in North America</a>. In addition, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy">Whose Heritage? Project</a> says that if other Confederate symbols are included, such as institution names and publicly displayed plaques, a more accurate number is that <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/02/04/cost-remove-confederate-monument-south">168 were taken down in 2020</a>.</p>
<h2>A changing landscape</h2>
<p>Not a single statue was built to honor the legacy of a Black person until 1974, when the likeness of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/07/11/archives/20000-at-unveiling-of-statue-to-mary-bethune-in-capital-a-fine.html">famed educator Mary McCleod Bethune</a> became the first Black statue ever <a href="https://washington.org/find-dc-listings/emancipation-memorial-freedmans-memorial">erected on federal lands</a>. The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/mlkm/index.htm">Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial</a> on the National Mall was not installed until in 2011. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A statue of a Black woman giving a loaf of bread to two children." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A view of the Mary McLeod Bethune statue in Lincoln Park in Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-the-mary-mcleod-bethune-statue-in-lincoln-park-in-news-photo/474111719?adppopup=true">Linda Davidson/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bethune’s statue stands in stark contrast to a nearby statue in Washington’s Lincoln Park. The <a href="https://washington.org/find-dc-listings/emancipation-memorial-freedmans-memorial">Freedman’s Memorial</a>, erected in 1922, immortalizes Abraham Lincoln standing clothed and erect, while a bare-chested Black man with broken chains around his wrists kneels at Lincoln’s feet. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/protesters-demand-removal-of-statues-depicting-freed-black-american-kneeling-before-lincoln">Tensions over this controversial symbol</a> led to the removal of a similar statue in Boston <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/us/boston-abraham-lincoln-statue.html">on Dec. 29, 2020</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A statue of a man standing near another man on his knees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Freedmen’s Memorial depicts President Abraham Lincoln freeing an enslaved man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/conservative-african-american-leaders-rally-and-call-on-news-photo/1227127010?adppopup=true">Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Public statues represent significant expenditures of time, money and political capital, especially with more than US$2 million and four years of legal battles spent on the Robert E. Lee statue’s removal in Charlottesville.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand key political developments, each week.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s politics newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Public art is widely viewed as a tool to tell a more complete and honest narrative. As noted in the key findings of the Monuments Lab Audit: <a href="https://monumentlab.com/audit?section=key-finding-4">Monuments should be held accountable to history</a>. “Monuments that perpetuate harmful myths and that portray conquest and oppression as acts of valor require honest reckoning, conceptual dismantling, and active repair,” the audit concluded. </p>
<p>Part of the repair is occurring in Charlottesville and in Richmond, Virginia, where most notably <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/25/878822835/rumors-of-war-in-richmond-marks-a-monumentally-unequal-america">“Rumors of War”</a>, featuring a Black man in dreds and urban streetwear atop a powerful horse, stands near the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.</p>
<p>As with Charlottesville, Americans can reject the notion that our future, as now represented in public statues, is permanently fixed in stone. Perhaps when it comes to our existing statues, it is time to consider what we can melt down in other places and forge anew.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173625/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frederick Gooding Jr. 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>With a few notable exceptions, public monuments across the United States are overwhelmingly white and male. A movement is slowly growing to tell a more inclusive history of the American experience.Frederick Gooding Jr., Dr. Ronald E. Moore Professor of Humanities and African American Studies, Texas Christian 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/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>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hWxszYK6IPU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<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/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>
</blockquote>
<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>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ix3764QIBIc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<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/824822017-08-15T01:21:24Z2017-08-15T01:21:24ZLest we forget: Children are watching this racism, violence and our reactions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182017/original/file-20170814-28964-rliy00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cara McClure of Birmingham, Alabama cries Sunday in Charlottesville, Virginia at a solidarity meeting.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Confederate-Monument-Protest-Rallies/8fdaa930289a46b18b24fca33142fe00/11/0">AP Photo/Brynn Anderson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I find myself in this place again. I am numb. I feel empty. I almost have no words.</p>
<p>The saddest part about this? I <a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-our-children-after-the-wounds-of-racism-divide-us-even-more-62471">wrote these exact words</a> little more than a year ago. </p>
<p>And now, here I am again, feeling the same feelings I felt after the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/us/shootings-alton-sterling-philando-castile/">deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile</a> and the Dallas and Baton Rouge police officers in the summer of 2016.</p>
<p>I had felt similar sadness and grief in 2012, around the time of the birth of my son. <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/trayvon-martin-21283721">Trayvon Martin</a> had been killed. I was pregnant with a black male in a world that was not ready for him.</p>
<p>Yet again, my heart is heavy, and I am feeling a little like a broken record. I grieve for our country and the resistance to its betterment. I grieve for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fights-in-advance-of-saturday-protest-in-charlottesville/2017/08/12/155fb636-7f13-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.ab93b408cf9b">Heather Heyer</a>, the woman killed by an alleged white supremacist when he drove into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. </p>
<p>She died because of the violence that erupted after white supremacist/ nationalists <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fights-in-advance-of-saturday-protest-in-charlottesville/2017/08/12/155fb636-7f13-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.ab93b408cf9b">protested the planned removal of a statue</a> of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who led the South’s efforts to hold onto slavery. For many, the removal of the statues of “heroes” of the Confederacy signifies recognition of the sins of slavery. Yet removing these symbols of white oppression and injustice seems to stir people to violence and bring out even more hate.</p>
<p>The constant barrage of horrifying images and commentary on traditional and social media footage of these tragedies seems to only make it worse. </p>
<p>Oddly enough, events like this drove me to academia. I reluctantly pursued a career in research. But, because these events are not going away, I, like a magnet, was drawn to research of widely publicized racially charged events on everyone, but especially on people of color. While I am heartbroken at the events themselves, I am glad to be doing research that might lead to better understanding, if not some healing, of the wounds that separate us. </p>
<p>Many black people are experiencing these events as acts of <a href="https://www.rivier.edu/journal/rcoaj-spring-2007/j88-crocker.pdf">vicarious racism</a>. Vicarious racism traditionally refers to experiencing racial discrimination indirectly through close contacts, such as family members and peers. I strongly believe, however, that this definition is not inclusive enough. Vicarious racism can be experienced by those who are not directly involved with the event, but who identify with the victims of racism generally on the basis of race. Age and gender could also be factors. Essentially, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28456418">vicarious racism</a> is the secondhand exposure to the racial discrimination and/or prejudice directed at another individual. </p>
<p>As a pediatrician, I am extremely concerned about vicarious racism’s impact on our children and youth. My concern is that black Americans, especially youths, are impacted by vicarious racism more than we expect and that its impact on children is understudied. Also, I want to know how to best help all of our children. What can we do to help them deal with their feelings? And what can we do to help them and ourselves deal with racism?</p>
<h2>Media onslaught</h2>
<p>The Charlottesville riot resurfaced much of the nation’s racial tensions. And, once again, children may be affected by the troubling and scary images. Research has shown even if children or youth are not close to the event geographically, they can still be influenced by the event. However, the closer they are to the event, the greater the mental health impact.</p>
<p>A 2001 <a href="https://augusta.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/studies-of-the-vicarious-traumatization-of-college-students-by-th">study</a> showed that after the September 11 attacks, higher levels of acute stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, ASD symptoms and PTSD symptoms were present in undergraduate students. Researcher Edward Blanchard of the University of Albany, State University of New York, studied three geographic different populations. One was in Albany, New York; the second in Augusta, Georgia; the third in Fargo, North Dakota. </p>
<p>One predictor for PTSD and ASD in this study was “connectedness” to the victims in the World Trade Center, meaning having a friend or knowing someone directly involved in the event. ASD in the three populations was almost 10 percent in the undergraduates from Fargo, nearly 20 percent in those from Augusta and approached 30 percent in the Albany group. Children in this study had more psychological symptoms closer to the event, but even children 1,000 miles away from the World Trade Center were still impacted.</p>
<p>This study’s findings are important, because it shows children can be impacted by traumatic events if they identify with the victim regardless of geography. Think of how youth of color everywhere may identify with these events, based on the ages and races of the victims.</p>
<p>Not only do the events themselves affect youth, but the onslaught of media afterwards is traumatizing. Like media coverage surrounding these racially charged events, after 9/11, media coverage was extensive and constant. The Blanchard study <a href="https://augusta.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/studies-of-the-vicarious-traumatization-of-college-students-by-th">found hours of TV</a> watched was a predictor of ASD, PTSD or the accompanying symptoms. </p>
<p>In another study, 166 children and 84 mothers who had no direct exposure to the September 11 attacks were <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6527402_Posttraumatic_stress_disorder_symptoms_following_media_exposure_to_tragic_events_Impact_of_911_on_children_at_risk_for_anxiety_disorders_Journal_of_Anxiety_Disorders_21_888-902">assessed for PTSD</a>. Almost 5.5 percent of the children and 1 percent of their mothers were symptomatic. Children <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6527402_Posttraumatic_stress_disorder_symptoms_following_media_exposure_to_tragic_events_Impact_of_911_on_children_at_risk_for_anxiety_disorders_Journal_of_Anxiety_Disorders_21_888-902">identified with the victims</a> of the attack, and the amount of TV younger children viewed as well as parental depression predicted increased risk of PTSD symptoms.<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6527402_Posttraumatic_stress_disorder_symptoms_following_media_exposure_to_tragic_events_Impact_of_911_on_children_at_risk_for_anxiety_disorders_Journal_of_Anxiety_Disorders_21_888-902"> Pre-event familial support</a> was associated with lower risk of PTSD symptoms.</p>
<h2>Children feel the pain, but parents can help</h2>
<p>While the 9/11 attacks are different from more recent events, there are similarities, including feelings of pain and fear, especially experienced by minorities. All of these events have evoked trauma, and children are not an exception. Children are traumatized and retraumatized by these events through the media, but can also be exposed to these events through the words and actions of their parents.</p>
<p>After the murder of Trayvon Martin, a 2013 study done including 104 African-American parents with children ages 6-18 showed that parents felt the <a href="http://jbp.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/12/09/0095798414563610.refs">need to protect</a> their own children. Parents used the events to discuss racism and attempt to process it with their children, as well as advise them as to how to behave if in a similar situation.</p>
<p>The guidance or socialization parents impart to their children accompanies the oral accounts of these events and becomes a part of the generational heirloom passed down. These tragedies are woven into the historical and multigenerational trauma of African-Americans. </p>
<p>The nation is grieving, and our children are impacted by the horrific events. We need to protect our children from the effects of media exposure to these events. We can do that by:</p>
<ul>
<li>caring for ourselves and making sure we seek the mental health care we need if we are severely impacted by these events</li>
<li>talking to our children in an age-appropriate way, gauging their knowledge and dispelling rumors or heightened fears</li>
<li> discussing concerning behavior with our child’s pediatrician or primary care provider</li>
<li> monitoring and limiting the exposure of these events through TV, radio, internet and social media.</li>
</ul>
<p>We need to protect our children from being the indirect victims of these events, which would compound the damage and the suffering. Ensuring we have healthy, resilient children to whom we may pass the torch is surely our priority. </p>
<p><em>This article is an updated version of an article that appeared in The Conversation on July 20, 2016.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nia Heard-Garris 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 violence in Charlottesville affects all children, but racially motivated attacks make children of color feel particularly vulnerable. Here are some ways to protect them.Nia Heard-Garris, Instructor, Division of Academic General Pediatrics, Mary Ann & J. Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program; Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago; Department of Pediatrics, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.