Confederate statues and memorials

[Valerie]

Perhaps the best example of the fallaciousness of the “erasing history” argument came last year, when Vanderbilt University in Nashville announced it was changing the name of its Confederate Memorial Hall. Defenders of the existing name predictably accused the university of “rewriting history.” But when local journalist Betsy Phillips looked into that history, she found a more complicated story. The confederate name dated not back to the Civil War, but to the early 1900s. At the time, there was a black university on the grounds called Roger Williams University. Here’s Phillips:

Roger Williams students palled around with Vanderbilt students and sat in the bleachers at football games and I read that professor as saying that they sat intermixed with the white students at football games, not just in the same bleachers, but sitting together . . .


In 1903, someone shot at the chapel. In 1904, someone shot the college president’s wife through a window of her own home (she was not killed). A month later, at the start of 1905, someone burned down Centennial Hall. In May of that same year, another building on campus burned down. The terrorism has its effect and Roger Williams got the message that it was no longer welcome on that plot of land.


The school disbanded and sold off its buildings. It was only then that the United Daughters of the Confederacy raised money to buy naming rights to the hall, which they named in honor of the Confederacy. The only history being re-written here is that the Confederate-named building existed only because a black university had been terrorized into dissolving.

 

[Valerie]

Certainly many of these monuments were constructed shortly after the Civil War, and for those, there’s more merit to the argument that they’re legitimate war memorials, immoral as that particular side of the war may have been. But the newer monuments have never been about memorializing the war dead. They’re about signaling opposition to the civil rights movement, or just plain intimidating black people.

 

[Si modo]

"Confederate statues and memorials"

…belong in museums and other such venues along with similar relics from the Nazi Era and apartheid South Africa.

Good plan. Is it prudent given the atmosphere right now? The People obviously are not in agreement.

They do not belong in public places, sanctioned by jurisdictions representing all the people; their removal from public places is warranted and justified.

And their removal is perfectly Constitutional – in no manner violating free speech or free expression (see Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans (2015)).

I don't believe their removal is unconstitutional.

 

[Valerie]

Most counties in Mississippi have Confederate monuments outside or near their courthouses. In Brooksville in Noxubee County, a Confederate soldier stands along the railroad tracks that separate the white part of town from the black, almost as if to guard against integration.

Opinion | We should treat Confederate monuments the way Moscow and Budapest have treated communist statues

I’ve since reported numerous stories about injustices in the South, many of which involved racial bias, and in nearly every instance, the criminal-justice system that adjudicated those cases did so in courtrooms or police departments or district attorney’s offices or city halls that stand in the shadow of taxpayer-funded monuments celebrating the fight to keep black people as slaves.

[Confederate or not, which monuments should stay or go? We asked, you answered.]


Perhaps we’re too accustomed to it to notice the absurdity, but it is unquestionably absurd: Each day, thousands of black, shackled defendants appear before judges in courthouses guarded by memorials to a cause that believed those defendants’ ancestors were little more than livestock. The symbolism is inescapable. If a totalitarian country were to try members of an oppressed minority in a courtroom flanked by monuments to those who did the oppressing, we’d rightly call them show trials. Yet we’ve been doing exactly this in wide swaths of the South for more than a century.


Supporters of keeping Confederate monuments in place argue that they’re not about celebrating slavery or oppression, but about acknowledging heritage and the past. They argue that to remove the monuments is an attempt to rewrite history. But that isn’t quite right. No one is suggesting we remove the Confederate army from the history of Bull Run or Gettysburg. The objection is to the monuments and memorials that celebrate or glorify the Confederacy, or that explicitly honor those most known for fighting to keep black people from obtaining the legal rights of citizens.

The Battle of Liberty Place monument that was recently removed from New Orleans amid much controversy is a good example. This was literally a monument to a bloody Reconstruction-era rebellion against the state government staged by a white supremacist group. It wasn’t erected after the Civil War, but in 1891, as Reconstruction ended and Louisiana was actively oppressing, terrorizing and disenfranchising black people. The city added a plaque celebrating white supremacy in 1932, nearly 70 years after the Civil War and nearly 60 years after the battle itself.

In fact, the “history and heritage” argument is a hard sell for a lot of the Confederate monuments and memorials.

 

[rightwinger]

I think the Charlottesville one has been around 100 years.

Yea....that was a great time for confederate memorials 1915-1920 during the second emergence of the klan

It was a subtle way of reminding negroes of their place

 

[Si modo]

I've lived most of my life north of the Mason Dixon Line. I've been in Virginia since 2009. Virginians take their Confederate history seriously. The Commonwealth is full of families who have been here long before the Civil War...not surprising since this is where the first Colonial settlement was. I hear what their arguments are. Not that I agree with them, but they are just as passionate as those who all of a sudden want the statues removed.

Charlottesville was the home of Thomas Jefferson. He owned slaves, but he also was a proponent of free speech and expression...a Founding Father.

I don't think for a second both sides down there didn't know exactly what would happen this weekend. Too bad the local governments didn't have more forethought. They were clearly used by both sides and a massive fail resulted.

 

[Valerie]

Angry opponents see the move as suppressing or rewriting history in the service of 'political correctness'.



Why Confederate monuments are coming down

 

[rightwinger]

I agree there is a confederate heritage. Many people had ancestors who fought and died for the south. I really don't have a problem with acknowledging it
But much of the Confederate heritage was usurped by racists using confederate symbols to antagonize blacks and remind them of their " true place"

 

[Si modo]

And, we should push this PC agenda no mater what the cost? No matter if The People are too divided?

 

[Si modo]

I agree there is a confederate heritage. Many people had ancestors who fought and died for the south. I really don't have a problem with acknowledging it
But much of the Confederate heritage was usurped by racists using confederate symbols to antagonize blacks and remind them of their " true place"

Yeah...the White Inferiorists have muddled this so much. I'm sure there are plenty who are not happy about their opposition to the removal being highjacked by these clowns.

 

[Si modo]

About a year or two ago...after SC did their thing with the flag removal...I'm driving down I95 shortly after that and the roadway is lined with huge confederate flags.

Not all who value a Confederate heritage are racists, but it's a good bet most who are racists use it.

It can't foster warm and fuzzies being a tool.

 

[rightwinger]

Unfortunately, this is what became of much of the confederate southern heritage

Those flags and monuments were put up not immediately after the war or even when confederate veterans were around to see them. They were put up long after the war at a time blacks were seeking their civil rights

 

[Si modo]

Unfortunately, this is what became of much of the confederate southern heritage

Those flags and monuments were put up not immediately after the war or even when confederate veterans were around to see them. They were put up long after the war at a time blacks were seeking their civil rights

No doubt the Confederate flag has been adopted as a tool to racists. It's a shame to those who truly only value a heritage, no matter how wrong that heritage was.

 

[rightwinger]

Many of the monuments being taken down were put up in large numbers in the 1915-1920 timeframe. They were put up by white city councils as a reminder to those who were seeking civil rights.

Those city councils have now changed. They have been pressured to remember the true purpose of the confederacy and who was hurt

Flying the confederate flag on public property is offensive

The statues may be better suited at other locations.

 

[JoeB131]

Yeah! Just like WWII was fought to free the Jews and create a Jewish homeland by yanking the area out from under the feet of the Palestinians to assuage feelings of guilt,

Except nobody ever said that is what WWII was about before, during or after, Cocksucker Dale.

World War II was pretty straightforward. Germany and Japan invaded and attacked their neighbors and the world did something about it.

On the other hand, slavery was the reason why the South fought the civil War... and they made that pretty clear when it started.

You see you can put out all the bullshit excuses the South came up with, but they all circle back to slavery.

States Rights- Some states want to have slavery
Tariffs- The South wanted the benefits of having slaves - selling good that had no labor costs to produce.
The Election of Lincoln- because the guy was an abolitionist.

It's all avoiding the same point. The South did a truly horrible thing. They want to pretend they didn't do a horrible thing, and the argument over the statues isn't about the statues.

And maybe that WHY we need to tear these statues down. To admit we did a horrible thing, not just the south, but all of us by starting a country based on all men being created equal but still having some people as property.

 

[JoeB131]

No doubt the Confederate flag has been adopted as a tool to racists. It's a shame to those who truly only value a heritage, no matter how wrong that heritage was.

you say that as though the Confederate Flag was just an innocent symbol that was appropriated by mean ones.

No, the Confederacy was a mean-spirited institution from the start.

But, hey, the Swastika was around as a symbol for THOUSANDS of years before those jerkbag Nazis ruined it for everyone.

 

[JoeB131]

Charlottesville was the home of Thomas Jefferson. He owned slaves, but he also was a proponent of free speech and expression...a Founding Father.

And we should probably keep that in mind as America's Original Sin. you see, the thing was, Slavery had been outlawed in Great Britain itself by the time of the American Revolution, it was only something that existed in the colonies. We had a revolution based on "All Men Are Created Equal", which is a great thought. (They aren't. There are always people who are stronger, smarter, prettier, etc. than you are and get the advantages of that.)

But Jefferson wrote those words. And then he went right home and had sex with Sally Hemmings, who had no say in the matter because she was his property.

I've lived most of my life north of the Mason Dixon Line. I've been in Virginia since 2009. Virginians take their Confederate history seriously. The Commonwealth is full of families who have been here long before the Civil War...not surprising since this is where the first Colonial settlement was. I hear what their arguments are. Not that I agree with them, but they are just as passionate as those who all of a sudden want the statues removed.

I'm sure they are. But those who want the statues removed see them as symbols of oppression. Lee doesn't deserve to be honored. He betrayed his oath of loyalty to his country to fight a war to continue slavery. It doesn't even matter if he personally thought slavery was wrong.

 

[JoeB131]

And, we should push this PC agenda no mater what the cost? No matter if The People are too divided?

What you call the PC Agenda, I call the decent thing to do.

How do you apologize for THIS?

Again, nobody in Germany mewls that we need to keep a statue of Goering or Rommel up because their grandfather died in WWII. They know they did a horrible thing.

It's about time for American in the South to admit their ancestors did a horrible thing, too.

 

[Si modo]

And, we should push this PC agenda no mater what the cost? No matter if The People are too divided?

What you call the PC Agenda, I call the decent thing to do.

How do you apologize for THIS?

Again, nobody in Germany mewls that we need to keep a statue of Goering or Rommel up because their grandfather died in WWII. They know they did a horrible thing.

It's about time for American in the South to admit their ancestors did a horrible thing, too.

Apologize? I had nothing to do with that.

 

[xyz]

Unfortunately, this is what became of much of the confederate southern heritage

Those flags and monuments were put up not immediately after the war or even when confederate veterans were around to see them. They were put up long after the war at a time blacks were seeking their civil rights

That also is not the flag of the C.S.A., that was a battle flag, although they did have flags of the C.S.A. with that design on part of the flag.