Confederate statues and memorials - II

Some more thoughts about statues, obelisks, plaques, and street names that memorialize the Old South's "heroes" -- the ones now being identified by some as "traitors" who took up arms against their country.

The argument for keeping them that appeals most to rational thinking is that "this is history and culture, and it should not be destroyed."

Yes, but . . .

It is false -- or at best -- incomplete history.   It is white folks' history.  And it is certainly false in context, in that the vast majority of these memorials were put up during two historical periods, one some 40 years and the other 100 years after the Civil War.   One period was the early 20th century, when the Southern whites were emerging from the depths of Reconstruction misery and asserting their dominance again.   Jim Crow laws were being imposed and upheld by a Supreme Court ruling, often considered the worst decision ever made by SCOTUS.

The second period of erecting memorials to white heroes was the Civil Rights era of the 1960s-70s.   Both periods were reactions to assertion of rights by blacks that were being opposed by whites.    More than simple honoring of dead heroes who had fought against the "United States," they were assertions by a white-dominated culture and political system that had long-favored whites.

So here is my proposal -- let's have history -- but let's have honest history, complete with context and the full story. That can't be shown in a single statue.   It's going to take museums, honest theme parks.  Not just the whitewashed history that some white people have wanted to believe.

Stone Mountain Park outside Atlanta (see ShrinkRap, Monday, Aug 21 for description) is a perfect place to start. This large 500 acre park, with the Rushmore-like images of three Confederate leaders carved into one side of the stone outcropping, could be turned into a comprehensive "History of the South and the Civil War" educational park.   It's already half done in that it already glorifies the "Old White South."

Leave the carving in place, leave the antebellum home museum in place.   Add the story of slavery through statues, displays and educational videos.   Show the negative, horrific side of slavery:  slave markets where the buying and selling of human beings was carried out;   the tiny cabins they had to live in;  tell the story of forcibly separated families when some members were sold off;   show the beatings;  show the KKK, the night riders;  and, yes, even the lynchings.

And then also show the positive:    the black heroes and heroines.  Harriett Tubman, Frederick Douglas, George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King, Jr.    And tell the story of the white abolitionists who helped slaves escape to the North.  And, of course, Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.

The truth is that the Atlanta History Center has already made a good start on doing just this.   The Cylorama, a gigantic depiction of a civil war battlefield scene, shown in painted background blended into three-dimension figures and scenery, has been moved to the History Center and refurbished.   It will be shown, not as before, but in its full historical context.   At least that is their announced plan.

This is also a good place to put in a plug for the new Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.   It just opened this year, and it is a great, and long overdue, addition to our cultural history.

We don't need to get rid of statues.   We need more statues -- and other, comprehensive dramatizations of the full Story of the South and Its People.

Ralph