Those “activists” who think they are making a difference by tagging monuments to Confederate veterans should think again. Instead of building support for removing the statues, they’re solidifying support for keeping them. Somebody has to pay for cleaning up the graffiti and it’s usually taxpayers.
For a lot of people, especially people not native to the South, the monuments aren’t a big deal one way or the other. Spray painting them isn’t going to make them anti-monument. It’s going to make them anti-activist. Besides, removing monuments, especially those for Confederate dead, isn’t a solution to anything except burying history.
The statues in front of courthouses and in public spaces have a complicated history. Most of the monuments, like Silent Sam at UNC, were erected 40 to 50 years after the Civil War as the veterans of the conflict were dying off. Those veterans and their families wanted to memorialize them because the pain and loss they felt was no less valid than the pain and loss of those who fought to preserve the Union and end slavery. But they were also part of the propaganda used to build the myth of the Lost Cause as Jim Crow was disenfranchising African-Americans and using terror to enforce segregation.
Removing the statues won’t change the ugly legacy of Jim Crow. What’s missing in the South are more memorials recognizing African-Americans and their contribution to our heritage. At UNC, just a few yards from Silent Sam, is a subtler but more poignant monument honoring the slaves whose labor and craftsmanship built the university. We need more of these types of memorials.
In most towns and cities in the South, African-Americans were, and are, an integral part of the culture and economy. In a thirty mile radius of my hometown, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Blind-boy Fuller, and Sonny Terry learned to play music and changed American cultural landscape in doing so. Other African-Americans offered major contributions to science, architecture, and education. Unfortunately, many had to leave the South to be successful. We should remind people of their accomplishments and their struggles.
We should also force people to confront the ugly legacy of Jim Crow so they will better understand the resentment toward the symbols of the old Confederacy. Between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950, 4,000 people were lynched in the South, not to mention the dozens who died during the Civil Rights Movement. A monument marking the spot of each of these lynchings would be a stark, if somewhat gruesome, reminder of both our history and how far we have come.
The vandals who want to remove the Confederate monuments would have more impact if they sought to educate the public instead of hiding history. African-Americans deserve more acknowledgement for their accomplishments and contributions to society than they currently have. And people of all races need to better understand the history of the South, both proud and ugly, to grasp the origins of the divisions that still ripple through America today.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Wise words, Thomas (and some good comments too). I’m afraid the fools who are de-facing the monuments are not going to see them though.
Monuments to the Confederacy have great symbolic force on our public campuses. I have been inspired in the 21 years I have worked at UNC Chapel Hill by the incredible energy and strength of students trying to educate administrators, faculty, staff and the public about the way our public place is racialized and about the contemporary impact of this landscape.
The shocking lack of knowledge of our country’s history and context of the time is truly both amazing and sad.
As naive as it is to say the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, it is equally ignorant to believe the war was all about slavery and those who fought for the South, including its leaders, fought just to preserve that awful institution.
Who wrote this? “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.” Abraham Lincoln? Uhh no, That was written by Robert E. Lee nearly 5 years before the start of the War. Lee actually freed his slaves on his own months before the Emancipation Proclamation.
What about the famous Civil War general selected to run against Lincoln by the Democrats in 1864 on a PRO-SLAVERY platform. That would be UNION major general George B McClellan. When McClellan’s troops took northwestern Virginia at the beginning of Virginia’s secession (now the state of West Virginia), he issued this order: “See that the rights and property of the people are respected and repress all attempts at negro insurrection.” Anyone deface his memorial which is in Washington DC?
Even Lincoln himself had to “unfree” local slaves in Kentucky who had been “freed” by a Union officer. Why? Union soldiers threw down their arms and disbanded when it happened. The Union military was on the verge of revolt. Keep in mind Kentucky was a UNION state.
I’ve even heard many of the Southern leaders who we have monuments of called “traitors.” We don’t call Franklin, Adams, Jefferson traitors and what the South did, unlike the American Revolution, may have been wrong in our eyes but it was perfectly LEGAL. Why was Jefferson Davis, Confederate president “arrested” and held for 2 years after the war, never tried for treason? No one would prosecute him because they all knew legally they had no case and could not win. He was pardoned to avoid the trial which the certain loss of by the US could have stirred up the country by legitimizing the South’s secession in court.
I apologize for the long note, but if we only took some time to really learn our history – as uncomfortable as that might be, I believe we would be better able to deal with these issues and come together as a country. History is rarely what we thought it was.
it amazes me that people cannot see the distinction between governmental display initiated today of the Confederate flag or similar forms of honoring that war and long standing monuments extolling or honoring Confederate veterans. Every country has monuments to events and people it would no longer respect or honor, but one need not deface them.
Your suggestion of more recognition of the contributions of African Americans is a far better choice than trying to remove long standing monuments. (However, the Confederate flag has no place in any current government building, car tag, or other government sanctioned activity.)
The NC legislature should re-consider its efforts to eliminate the Historical Preservation funds and consider re-directing new funding within that entity to recognition of the contributions of NC African Americans. I suspect we would all be surprised at what we learn!
Well said by all ,thanks for the article Mr. Mills.