{"id":105,"date":"2017-08-29T22:08:20","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T22:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/?p=105"},"modified":"2017-09-21T18:47:02","modified_gmt":"2017-09-21T18:47:02","slug":"confederate-memorials-celebrating-racism-erasing-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-cox\/blog\/2017\/08\/29\/confederate-memorials-celebrating-racism-erasing-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Confederate Memorials: Celebrating Racism, Erasing History"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Cox<\/p>\n

August 29, 2017<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cAll those folks worried about erasing history when Confederate monuments come down will be thrilled to learn about the existence of books.\u201d \u2013 Jamil Smith,<\/a> August 16<\/p>\n

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\u201cAll black Americans are born into a society which is determined\u2014repeat, determined\u2014that they shall never know the truth about themselves or their society.\u201d \u2013 James Baldwin, \u201cBlack Power,\u201d 1968 (in Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption<\/em><\/a>: Uncollected Essays<\/em>, Vintage Books, 2011, page 102)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This past weekend I traveled to Asheville, a town I’ve visited dozens of times. I finally took a closer look at the monument to Confederate-era political and military leader Zebulon Vance that towers over downtown Asheville. Like other such monuments, you learn nothing from gazing upon it: simply the dates of his birth and death, and the fact that it was placed there by a racist organization many decades after the Civil War.<\/p>\n

A monument to Robert E. Lee is a few steps away, in the city’s central square. It was foisted upon Pack Square during a time of intense racist violence and terrorism: 1920, a few months after \u201cred summer<\/a>\u201d (racist pogroms<\/a> throughout much of the nation, claiming the lives of hundreds of Black people). The late 1910s and 1920s also witnessed the dramatic rise of a new, revitalized KKK<\/a>. \u00a0As always with Confederate monuments, it was erected as a threat.<\/p>\n

Walk down the hill a couple hundred yards and you can actually learn something — quite a bit — about the city’s African-American history from this wonderful mural<\/a>, which is off the beaten path and seen by few.<\/p>\n

The August 10-11 racist mobilizations and violence in Charlottesville \u2013 violence that extended far beyond<\/a> the car attack that killed Heather Heyer \u2013 provoked renewed debate about Confederate memorialization.\u00a0 The racist\/fascist mobilization was called in defense of a statue of the cruel slave-master Robert E. Lee<\/a>, a man whose racism exceeded the norm among whites of the era \u2026 no easy feat.<\/p>\n

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What is memorialized by Confederate statues and historical markers<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In 2015 the Southern Poverty Law Center launched an effort to catalog and map Confederate place names and other symbols in public spaces, both in the South and across the nation. This study, while far from comprehensive, identified a total of 1,503.<\/p>\n

Into the 21st<\/sup> century, so many years after the Civil War, memorials for to celebrate slavery are still being built:<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou are changing history,\u201d\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0said on Tuesday of efforts to remove Confederate monuments in Charlottesville, Virginia, and elsewhere across the United States. \u201cYou\u2019re changing culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

History about as old as the George W Bush presidency, it turns out in a surprising number of cases \u2013 and culture stretching back to the heyday of Britney Spears.<\/p>\n

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Thirty-two Confederate<\/a> memorials have been dedicated in the past 17 years, according to a survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). That\u2019s at least 135 years after the demise of the secessionist movement the monuments ostensibly celebrate.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The SPLC report<\/a> includes this clear explanation of the meaning and purpose of these memorials:<\/p>\n

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“The argument that the Confederate flag and other displays represent \u201cheritage, not hate\u201d ignores the near-universal heritage of African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved by the millions in the South. It trivializes their pain, their history and their concerns about racism \u2014 whether it\u2019s the racism of the past or that of today. And it conceals the true history of the Confederate States of America and the seven decades of Jim Crow segregation and oppression that followed the Reconstruction era.<\/p>\n

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\u2026. Despite the well-documented history of the Civil War, legions of Southerners still cling to the myth of the Lost Cause as a noble endeavor fought to defend the region\u2019s honor and its ability to govern itself in the face of Northern aggression.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This deeply rooted but false narrative is the result of many decades of revisionism in the lore and even textbooks of the South that sought to create a more acceptable version of the region\u2019s past. The Confederate monuments and other symbols that dot the South are very much a part of that effort.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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What is <\/strong>not<\/strong><\/em> memorialized<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Here are a few other examples of histories that are overshadowed, literally and figuratively, by the hundreds of Confederate memorials that dot the landscape:<\/p>\n