why confederate monuments are important

For many, the memory of the war proved as polarizing as the war itself. Landrieu’s removal of the statues, however, does precisely what he rails against: It omits the past. The waving of other flags in public recently also carries with it a lot of symbolic value. It's not clear whether the cult will accept that they were conned—or whether more upheaval is ahead. But these monuments reveal more about who built them and why they did so than the figure they propose to honor. Finally, it's important to recognize that the moral standards that condemn Confederate monuments should be applied to monuments to left-wing perpetrators of … Our current president tweeted what they symbolized to him. Brian Kemp, the bane of #MAGA Republicans, uses his big, state-of-the-state speech to find a way forward. For over 100 years, those monuments have stood as a symbol of the power of white supremacy. Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. That conflict is trivialized when we divorce the discussion from what the monuments to confederate war heroes symbolize. When another round of queries forced the park to remove the plywood in 1994, administrators agreed only with the provision that an interpretive sign be added giving the memorial’s history and a tribute to Brown written by civil rights activist W.E.B Du Bois. In 1867, former Confederates began calling for a memorial to Shepherd as a victim of Brown’s misguided attempt to destroy the South and incite civil war. Of where we might yet go. Confederate heritage groups derided the need for an interpretive sign. Rather than framing John Brown as a radical abolitionist who killed a faithful slave, she heralded Brown as the valiant defender of freedom who “struck the first blow” against the tyranny of slavery for which her father and other Union soldiers fought. That power is precisely why so many people point out that the erection of these monuments during the birth of the KKK and Jim Crow laws were a symbolic gesture meant to terrorize black people into submission. To date, there are over 700 monuments to the Confederacy - most, but not all, located in the South. Here's Why. With her husband facing a second impeachment and the Trump Organization under intense legal scrutiny, the First Lady hopes for a less tumultuous future. Similar veneration, of course, … Consider, for example, the controversy stirred over a memorial erected not in the former Confederacy to celebrate a military leader, but rather in a small Union town that honored a black man. 16.07.2020 - As Confederate monuments and memorials are toppled across the United States, Stanford historian James T. Campbell says it is important to think historically not only about the past but also about our own time and what future generations might say about us. In the period of Reconstruction that followed the war, this egalitarian vision was, for the first time, written into our laws and Constitution. Why such a discrepancy between the two charts? Empty pedestals are just that: void of meaning all together. But the advent of multiracial democracy in the Southern states inspired a wave of terrorist opposition by the Ku Klux Klan and kindred groups, antecedents of the Klansmen and neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville. Forty years later it sparked renewed conflict between Confederate groups and the NAACP. Monuments are fundamental to the human experience—they allow us to remember our past, express the values of our culture, and sometimes to even oppress with a constant reminder of a difficult history or societal expectation. You….. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017. Should American nationality be based on shared values, regardless of race, ethnicity and national origin, or should it rest on “blood and soil,” to quote the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., whom Trump has at least partly embraced? Since the horrific church shooting in Charleston, S.C., two years ago, calls to remove Confederate flags and monuments have swept the South from Virginia to Texas. The following year, they dedicated another memorial to Brown — one that depicted him as a hero whose traits challenged acceptable black behavior in the Jim Crow South. And these debates revealed time after time that there has never been a single historical interpretation of what the Civil War meant — for Unionists or Confederates, for black or white. That is why all presidents are now required to wear an American flag … Symbols are very powerful in American culture. The monument divided the African American community and exposed different political philosophies on how to confront the pervasive economic and social system of white supremacy. In the center’s most recent report, it documented more than 1,700 Confederate symbols remaining across the country. An originalist case for trying, convicting and disqualifying a president after he or she leaves office. Condemning the memorial as the “Uncle Tom Slave Monument,” black leaders and the black press followed her lead and launched blistering attacks. Before the turn of the century, Confederate graves had for the most part not been cared for in federal cemeteries, and erecting a Confederate monument was considered treasonous. The values these monuments stood for, he says, included a “glorification of the cause of the Civil War.” White women were instrumental in raising funds to build these Confederate monuments. Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. Neither side was any happier with this compromise than they had been with the proposal 14 years earlier. NAACP leaders hoped that the monument might be dumped in the Potomac River, castigating the Confederate heritage groups for implying that Shepherd and “thousands of other” African Americans supported the Confederacy. “The monuments reflect a sense of centering whiteness as the norm and heralding people who caused harm to Black people, specifically in the woods. At the dedication, Pearl Tatten, the black music director and daughter of a Union soldier, unexpectedly rose and offered a different narrative. NAACP leaders hoped that the monument might be … The great waves of Confederate monument building took place in the 1890s, as the Confederacy was coming to be idealized as the so-called Lost Cause and the Jim Crow system was being fastened upon the South, and in the 1920s, the height of black disenfranchisement, segregation and lynching. I suspect that the data was intentionally manipulated by the SLPC on the Confederate monument timeline in order to buttress a false assumption/allegation—that the main motivation for the building of the Confederate monuments … A major reason that many cities and towns haven’t removed publicly sited Confederate monuments is that state laws prevent them. The statues were part of the legitimation of this racist regime and of an exclusionary definition of America. The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. Not wanting to exacerbate tensions, the park elected instead to return the stone memorial to the street but cover it with plywood. This is why Confederate monuments appeared across the entire country, even in parts thousands of miles away from the Confederacy–intending to spread a false narrative of southern pride. Today the Shepherd memorial still stands in its inconspicuous spot along Potomac Street. The UDC saw no need for a sign, while the NAACP saw no need for the memorial. It wasn’t simply a gesture meant to inspect the president’s hair, but hair became a symbol of what was possible for little black boys. But in removing monuments, we not only eliminate memorials to the Confederacy, but also erase the history of those who fought against the values the monuments claim to represent. That’s where Foner goes next. The people making the argument for the removal of these confederate monuments are suggesting that we take into account what they symbolize to the group of Americans that are not included in the president’s “our.” We can only honor our history if we know it. The discussion we’ve been having about confederate symbols ever since Dylann Roof killed those nine churchgoers in Charleston is yet another example of why racial hatred seems to be exploding these days. Beyond flags, one of the most iconic photographs of Obama during his presidency was all about symbolism. Doug Ducey to remove the monuments on public land that … Confederate and racist monuments are coming down. This is an opinion column. Beyond their romantic exaltation of the Lost Cause, Confederate Monuments also idealize the virtues of honor and bravery. Although they discovered that Shepherd was a free man accidentally killed in the raid, they chose to celebrate him as a loyal and faithful slave who had refused to participate in Brown’s abolitionist plot. But when the local black college dedicated a tablet to Brown in 1918, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) renewed their efforts to reclaim the commemorative landscape. Nearly 700 of them are monuments. Confederate Statues A recent hot-button subject in the media has been what to do with Confederate monuments in the South. Slowly. In recent years, several monuments in the US that commemorate military and political leaders of the defeated southern Confederacy (which fought … In defiance of law and tradition and a resistance to change that has spanned generations. Monuments should speak for themselves, they declared. It has to do with how people feel about what the flag has come to symbolize. Like all monuments, these statues say a lot more about the time they were erected than the historical era they evoke. Washington Monthly’s 2020 College Guide and Rankings, Photo by Adam Schultz / Biden for President, Advice to Team Biden: Delete Your Twitter Accounts, What the Founders Would Have Done with Trump, After Being Attacked by Trump, Georgia's Republican Governor Tries Balancing Act, On the Way Out, Melania Seeks Distance from the Rest of the Family. And while its inscription is at the very least misleading, its presence — along with the NPS plaque — offers valuable lessons about the contested nature of Civil War memory. Aside from burial sites and temples, some of the oldest structures in the world are memorials to the dead. Opinion: Don't Take Down Confederate Monuments. There's been a lot of discussion lately about whether Confederate monuments and memorials should remain in public spaces. President Trump’s Thursday morning tweet lamenting that the removal of Confederate statues tears apart “the history and culture of our great country” raises numerous questions, among them: Who is encompassed in that “our”? After an inquiry by the UDC, the NPS agreed to return it — if it was accompanied by interpretive plaque that explained its controversial history. Art historians Cynthia Mills and Pamela Simpson argued, in Monuments to the Lost Cause, that the majority of Confederate monuments, of the type they define, were "commissioned by white women, in hope of preserving a positive vision of antebellum life." If the NPS had not returned the Shepherd monument and provided the interpretive sign, it would have overlooked the African American activists who fought to reclaim their history of the Civil War as part of their quest for equal citizenship. For fourteen years, the memorial remained covered. 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