What Do We Want to Memorialize?

What do we do when one person’s “history” is another person’s pain?

Like many people, I am fascinated by Civil War history. I confess that in 1990 I sat transfixed during every episode of the PBS Ken Burns documentary. I have spent hours touring historic battlegrounds in Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi, and have lingered in solemn silence at the large Confederate and National Cemeteries in Marietta, GA, reflecting on what those buried there endured. As a kid, instead of “army men,” I played with a “Blue and Gray Battle Set,” spending many happy hours staging battles with plastic horses, swords, cannons, and dozens of blue and gray uniformed soldiers in various poses. I have in my personal collection a Confederate dollar bill (probably fake) and a small cannonball found years ago near a southern battlefield. I have visited Robert E. Lee’s home in Arlington, Virginia, standing on his porch overlooking Washington, and wondering what kind of heartbreak he felt in choosing to side with his home state over the nation he loved. A Texas native, I have in my own family tree forefathers who stood ready to defend their postage stamp-sized homesteads from what they believed was “northern aggression,” trying to save their livelihoods and families. There is no getting around it: I was born and grew up a white Southerner.

I do not apologize for that, but I do apologize for the actions and beliefs of my ancestors. Though they were not slave owners, I have reason to assume that they, at least by proxy, defended the institution. Any doubts that slavery was the centerpiece of the Confederacy vanished when I read what Confederate President Jefferson Davis said was the reason his state seceded from the Union: “…the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked (by the Union) to maintain the position of the equality of the races.” Davis’s vice president Alexander Stephens called slavery the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy, adding that it “was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.” In outlining its reasons for seceding, the state of Mississippi declared, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world.”

Like many who are proud to call themselves Americans, I believe that great gain often comes through great pain. The sacrifices during the Civil War, the Revolutionary War and World Wars I and II eventually brought benefit that justified the pain. So when something causes so many people injury, we have to ask, “Is the gain worth it? Does the greater good warrant the suffering?“ We see many cases in which it does. But what about the issue of bestowing honor to Confederate warriors and symbols?

Statues and memorials to honor Confederate leaders are common where I live. One of the main thoroughfares in my neighborhood is named after a prominent Confederate general. There is a memorial to him in the nearby county seat. A few miles away, thousands of commuters every day pass an oversized statue of another Southern general, one who went on to become the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

There are an estimated 1,503 such monuments and memorials in our country. But more Americans are asking hard questions about the value of calling “heroic” an ideology dedicated to the oppression of fellow humans made in the image of God. To most black Americans, these memorials are a painful reminder of the suffering their ancestors endured, an abuse whose shadow still falls over everyday life. What they find particularly cruel is that many of these relics were placed in their prominent locations within our lifetimes, the timing of their creation roughly coinciding with the enactment of Jim Crow laws that limited the rights of black Americans, and again during historic civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s. In doing so, the Confederate emblems apparently served a dual purpose, not only honoring the South and its antebellum ideals, but also serving as an in-your-face protest against attempts at civil rights reform.

Because of the hurt these reminders bring to people I know, I have been wondering if there exists any objective reasoning for how such symbols contribute to the greater good of the American people. What do we gain from them that excuses the imposition of pain on so many people? As fascinating as that period of our history is, I have thus far heard no convincing evidence for how praising the convictions of the Confederacy brings any shared gain, particularly when we recognize that many of those monuments were erected with the specific intent to inflict pain on those striving for justice decades after the Civil War.

I have read several opinions from those in favor of keeping such monuments intact. Each makes a case for preserving history, but most tend to downplay the personal and corporate anguish of a large segment of our population, and none have convinced me that people actually learn real history from walking past a monument.

So what’s the answer? Do we sweep away all vestiges of the Confederacy? Or would we be content to scrap the most glaringly oppressive symbols and leave the rest?

One idea on the table proposes preserving the statues and monuments, but in museums whose purpose is to appreciate the artistry of sculptures rather than the reason for their creation. Others argue the monuments should remain in the open, and that we should erect alongside them some reminder of the damage that racial injustice has imposed upon our nation. I believe both of these ideas have at least some merit.

But if teaching history is the goal, there are other examples we could follow, some of which do address the distress of so many black Americans. The American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia has walked that tightrope effectively by putting an African-American in charge as curator. The Whitney Plantation in Louisiana recalls antebellum life, but emphasizes the gruesome toll that slavery took on most of its residents. What other ways can we immortalize our past without glorifying a cause that dehumanized thousands of innocents and left a near-indelible mark on their descendants?

So far, more than 114 Confederate monuments have been removed from public property. Others are scheduled to come down, and the fight over their removal has proven to be a powder keg. I do not condone the violent vigilante efforts to topple or deface monuments. Just the same, telling an entire segment of our population they have no right to be offended by monuments to oppression seems inadequate and disrespectful, the equivalent of telling mourners they have no right to grieve.

I recognize there are also those who will grieve the loss of Confederate memorials. But isn’t the loss of any memorial to domination and injustice, in reality, a gain for any freedom-loving American? More than a century-and-a-half has passed since the Confederacy ended; it’s time we stop memorializing its credo of cruelty, and start honoring the liberty and equity we all desire. Let’s build monuments to racial healing.

That’s an ideology that would be worth memorializing.

© Nick Walker 2020