How Do We Want to be Memorialized as a Nation?
What we as a nation memorialize says a lot about what we value, how we want to be remembered, and how we want to step into the future as a community of people.
Did you know that the Confederate monuments were built between 1890 and 1950? And the era coincides exactly with the era of Jim Crow and segregation? And that the biggest spike of Confederate monument building was between 1900 and 1920? And that many of these monuments were cemented in front of statehouse and government buildings, as well as highly-trafficked public venues?
What does this tell us? It tells us that these monuments were not built so much as a memorial but as a means of intimidating African-Americans and affirming white supremacy. Let me be blunt: Confederate monuments were built to remind black people that their lives remained under the control of white people. They were built and installed to remind black people that they could be murdered, strung up and hung from trees, and lit on fire in public spaces while white parents dressed in their Sunday best witnessed for their entertainment and their children’s edification. In other words, with statues of Stonewall Jackson and Nathan Bedford Forrest looking down on them, any Black person who dared cross the color line or disobey the written and unwritten race rules, or was accused of such, knew the likely consequences of their “transgression”.
If anything, what these statues memorialize is a treasonous government led by traitors such as Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Stonewall Jackson. They memorialize a government whose founding principle was the perpetuation and expansion of slavery and the glorification of white supremacy. South Carolina specifically stated that leaving the Union was about slavery. In fact, the secessionists were against state’s rights and even tried to sue states that wouldn’t return their runaway property. In the 1920’s, Florida and other southern states passed laws requiring a “true and correct” rendering of history, insisting on verbiage such as “War between the States” instead of Civil War. The point was to downplay the treason at the heart of the secession, by implying that there was no unified nation from which to secede. In the furtherance of this cause, one of the largest white supremacy memorials was completed only fifty years ago. The Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy, Georgia’s Stone Mountain, was completed in 1960.
Is this what we as a nation value? Is this how we want to be remembered and how we want to step into the future as a country?! Let’s be crystal clear: the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the 9/11 Memorial-I can go on and on . . . are not Confederate monuments, however, complicated or “impure” the lives of the men represented in these monuments.
These memorials were not built to intimidate or to affirm white supremacy or any kind of supremacy. They memorialize those who have sacrificed in the desire for freedom, justice, life, and liberty. They too wrestled with their own demons and flaunted their own moral failings. However, limited their vision of justice and equality, they laid the foundation for us to strive for a more perfect union, of becoming one out of many – E Pluribus Unum.
Today we are in an epic- historical battle for the soul of the nation we so love. And for which so many have sacrificed. In this time when Covid-19 reminds us of our mortality, only the really important questions are left: What do we really value? How do we want to be represented and remembered? What is the meaning of this country on our planet? How do we want this nation to step into the future?
Be well,
Bill