I have been presenting multimedia talks about monuments and memorials as significant works of art throughout the country for the last five years. I always emphasize that memorials express crucial civic messages for the country, reflecting important American values and ideals.
The most successful monuments commemorate the successful resolution of a conflict. They express ideas of the era they reference as well as the period when they were built. It has been observed before that the hardest thing to predict is the past. The meaning of individual monuments continues to change unpredictably with time, as history continues to be reconsidered.
One of the most common misconceptions is that memorials exist to preserve national history and contain apolitical lessons for future generations. Let me express an essential point directly: the significance of memorials is not about history; it is about politics.
Every memorial is designed to make a political statement.
The confederate monuments (there are more than 700 still standing) were for the most part erected more than a half century after the Civil War and were an explicit attempt to cow and intimidate blacks in the 20th century. They were erected in civic places of honor in front of court houses, governors’ mansions, municipal parks and state houses.
They are a deliberate attempt to sanitize a sordid history to achieve sordid political ends. Most were built during the period of the most intense lynching and were a key element of the strategies of the supporters of Jim Crow laws.
One thing that you must admit about the neo-Nazis and white supremacists is that they have an accurate understanding of the meaning of confederate monuments that reinforces their racist inclinations.
The Confederate flag as we know it today — an intensely controversial symbol and an element of many monuments — came into existence just before the end of the civil war and was never seen by the majority of confederate soldiers and leaders. It really received prominence in the ‘60s as an emblem of resistance to the civil rights movement. Its historic significance is to the 1960s not the 1860s. The fact that it is intensely offensive to African Americans is that they understand this all too well.
The whitewashing of Robert E. Lee is especially troublesome. He was a brutal slaveholder, guilty of treason and responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Even as a general, he made critical military mistakes that led to southern defeat. There is no legitimate reason to give him a place of honor in the public square.
The irony of the Charlottesville march is that it will accelerate a long overdue movement to remove many of these troublesome statues from places of veneration. It is imperative for each generation of Americans to face our past squarely, warts and all, in order to proceed thoughtfully into the future.
The removal of confederate monuments that were, in fact, designed to falsify and politicize history and to justify racial discrimination, is an important step in helping us all to heal and collectively atone for the immense national disgrace of the institution of slavery.
It is America’s great unfinished business.
