Confederate Monuments and Cultural Conquest

Larger than life Confederate generals line Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA, which served as the Confederacy’s capital, contained one of the largest slave ports, a slave gallows, and auction blocks. Yet the grand boulevard features giant statues of Robert E. Lee, JEB Stuart, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson.

Many countries develop monuments and museums to reinforce the political power of the dominant group by asserting their cultural command over the historical narrative. A clear example of cultural dominance in divided societies can be found in Jerusalem, where I have done the bulk of my research on collective memory, representation, and cultural ownership. In Israel, Jewish Israeli monuments, museums, and other methods of commemoration have been used to secure historical space as well as physical land.

Confederate monuments such as the statues in Richmond and throughout the South are used to lay claim to the South’s history, glorify the slave owners, and continue to assert the supremacy of whites over blacks. They convey the notion that Confederate leaders were heroes of a Lost Cause — a fight to preserve a glorious Southern civilization and self rule from Northern aggression. They ignore the historical fact that the South seceded to preserve the institution of slavery and reimagine the story as a heroic fight for States’ rights and self government. By ignoring the reality of slavery, and ignoring the human stories of the slaves, these monuments excise black history from the South’s “heritage” and historical memory.

Even though the Confederacy lost the civil war, and slavery was abolished, these monuments commemorated the ultimate white victory over blacks in the South. They were largely erected between 1890 and 1920 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in reaction to the legal equality provided by the 14th and 15th amendments. When the monuments were erected, white violence against blacks had spiked, and the statues of Confederate leaders provided cover for lynchings, beatings, expulsions, and terror.

By privileging a story of white heroism, these memorials asserted white hegemony over the historical memory of the South. Confederate leaders literally loom over the very ground black southerners walk, a constant reminder that black stories are unimportant, black status is less than that of whites, black bodies and pain are less important than perceived white power, and the black fight for real justice and equality remains unsuccessful.

Other societies in our hemisphere have acknowledged the history and legacy of slavery differently, and have represented slavery, emancipation, and redemption in imposing public monuments. Jamaica, an English colony, eliminated slavery in 1834. In Emancipation Park in Kingston, a large monument, called Redemption Song, stands 11 feet tall. This monument comprised of a naked man and woman each gazing toward the heavens symbolizes the liberation of slaves’ bodies and their minds from bondage.

Barbados, another British colony, abolished slavery in 1834 as well. On the island’s main thoroughfare stands a giant statue of Bussa, a slave who inspired a massive revolt 1816. The large statue depicts a black man, hands raised and fists clenched, breaking the bonds of slavery. The statue’s wrists are ringed in shackles and broken chains hang from each hand.

These statues, sites of historical memory in former British colonies, represent the past in vastly different ways than the Confederate monuments do. They celebrate individual slaves’ humanity and their journey from bondage into freedom. Instead of celebrating slavers and their violence against blacks, the Caribbean statues humanize the slaves and celebrate their emancipation.

They stand in sharp relief to the South’s memorials of slave owners. They show us that there are many ways of representing the institution of slavery, individuals’ bondage, slaves’ lives, bodies, and minds, and their freedom. But their essential function is the same — to tell a story of the past that highlights a particular story: that of slaves becoming free, rather than highlighting the slave owners.

The American public has begun a sporadic, but increasing, dialogue over the placement of Confederate monuments, the naming of schools and locations, and public display of the Confederate battle flag. The August 2018 Charlottesville White Supremacist protest (and anti-racism counter protests) ostensibly challenged the relocation of a large statue of Robert E. Lee.

A few months earlier, in May 2017, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu removed several confederate statues and gave a moving address about their historical role in the South. As Landrieu noted, “After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone’s lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.” Just a few days ago, Dallas, TX removed a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public park, with police guarding against protesters.

Last year, Yale University convened a group of students, faculty, and trustees to decide whether to rename John C. Calhoun College. In February 2017, Yale decided to rename the College for Grace Murray Hopper, a trailblazing computer scientist and a rear admiral in the US Navy. Yale President Peter Salovey noted, “The decision to change a college’s name is not one we take lightly, but John C. Calhoun’s legacy as a white supremacist and a national leader who passionately promoted slavery as a ‘positive good’ fundamentally conflicts with Yale’s mission and values.”

At Harvard Law School, a small monument to the slaves who built the college was installed this month on a pleasant walkway, far away from the center of the University. This monument is modest and humble. It is a plaque commemorating Harvard’s slaves, which is affixed to a large rock. In Harvard Yard, the central University common space, sits an imposing statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of the University. Those monuments reflect the relative importance between the rich, white donor and the chattel who built the College brick by brick.

Other colleges and universities, public secondary schools, and government buildings are named for noted Confederates or White Supremacists. Conversations about renaming these institutions and locations have begun to take place more often.

If the US wants to move forward and find a story where all of us can view ourselves, we must start to grapple honestly with our origins as a nation, as Mayor Landrieu suggested. As former President George W. Bush noted upon the dedication of the Museum of African American History and Culture, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”

We need to have an honest discourse about slavery, racism, and sexism — among all Americans, not just Democrats, or people of color, or women. We all need to confront the nation’s birth as a country where people with white skin pushed out and committed genocide against Native Americans to expand their power, influence, and footprint. We need to come to terms, humbly, with the fact that white elites enslaved, tortured, raped, bred, and killed blacks from Africa and maintained the repugnant institution of slavery until they were forced to stop. We need to understand that violence against people of color is part of a continuum of violence that started during slavery and continues today.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his book, Between the World and Me, describes white violence against blacks. “In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage. Enslavement was not merely the antiseptic borrowing of labor — it is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interest. And so enslavement must be casual wrath and random manglings, the gashing of heads and brains blown out over the river as the body seeks to escape.” The real violence on real bodies, rather than just a narrative of history that excised those humans, must be part of the discourse. And we must stop dismissing this conversation as mere “identity politics” that deflects attention from the real problems in American society. If this wound continues to fester without sunlight and an antibiotic, other issues will remain unsolved as well.

Recently, several black Richmond teens visited in the monument and questioned whether a discussion of the monuments matter when they and their friends need to steal to eat, when the black community has lost so many to gun violence, when the education system is failing them. This is a very important question, which points to the very purpose of the monuments themselves, which are symbols of the endemic racism that these teens are facing. If society had built monuments to freed slaves, and had created a society to match, in which poor black kids truly had the same opportunity as white kids, in which violence was not used as a tool to terrorize black people, where the community took care of its black citizens as it takes care of its privileged white citizens, equally and enthusiastically, the monuments would indeed be meaningless. These monuments are concrete representations of the white supremacy and the racism that has created the conditions for very real lived experiences. And removing the Confederate monuments is merely a symbol of the difficult conversations and societal changes that need to happen.

Sixteenth President Abraham Lincoln levied today’s charge in the middle of the nineteenth century. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…to do all which may achieve and cherish — a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Stephanie Gerber Wilson, PhD writes about historical memory and representation in divided societies. She is the author of a historical and analytical study of the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem, entitled Cultural Citadel.