Confederate Monuments Coming Down, But Where Are They Going?

Confederate iconography is coming down across the South, in some cases under an accelerated schedule after a deadly clash between white supremacists and counter protesters last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia. But as Confederate statues, increasingly seen as monuments to segregation, slavery and treason, are pulled from their pedestals, the decision over what to do with them is proving to be prickly and problematic.

There are 718 Confederate monuments in the United States, according to an inventory compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, mainly in the South, but also as far north as Wisconsin. In some cases, the statues have been moved to sections of cemeteries where Civil War veterans are buried, as the city of Orlando, Florida, did in June with its “Johnny Reb” statue.

In other instances, the monuments are going to local history museums, where people can choose to view them or not and where trained staff can provide historical context. But that, too, is controversial.

In Gainesville, Florida, this week, a local history museum rejected a statue that had been removed from a public space after vandals splashed red paint across it. Local veterans also objected to its placement in a local Veterans Memorial Park. The Daughters of the Confederacy, the group that erected “Old Joe” in 1904, finally agreed to take it back in a terse, four-word statement: “We accept the Confederate Soldier Statue,” according to a local report by The Gainesville Sun, but where the monument will go now is unclear.

In Maryland, an offer by the Montgomery County Historical Society to take a statue removed from city property in Rockville was rejected because the museum is also on city property. The statue went begging for a home for more than a year until White’s Ferry, a private company that takes vehicles from Montgomery County across the Potomac River to Leesburg, Virginia, agreed to take it.

In other cases, monuments are removed from public spaces in one city, only to be erected in another.

Not ‘A Slavery Issue’

The University of Louisville removed a statue in November that had been erected in 1895 by the Kentucky Woman’s Monument Association to commemorate Kentuckians who fought and died for the Confederacy.

“We are not here to erase history, but we are here to announce that this statue should be situated somewhere more appropriate than a modern campus that celebrates its diversity,” University of Louisville President James Ramsey said in a statement at the time. “Kentucky certainly played a unique role in the Civil War, but it is the culture of inclusion we strive for each day at U of L that will define our future. Over the years, our campus has grown to encircle this monument, which does not symbolize the values of our campus community or that of a 21st Century institution of higher education.”

The statue remained in storage until May, when the small Kentucky city of Brandenburg enthusiastically accepted the Confederate monument, erecting it near the spot where a Confederate general launched an 1863 raid on neighboring Indiana.

Brandenburg Mayor Ronnie Joyner doesn’t look at the debate over monuments as a “black versus white issue” or as “a slavery issue,” Newsweek reported. “This is a monument that is dedicated to Confederate veterans.”

In late 2015, the New Orleans City Council declared monuments honoring P.G.T. Beauregard, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and the Battle of Liberty Place public nuisances and said they should be removed.

The city said in a May press release that it is soliciting proposals from nonprofits and governments for a more appropriate place to display the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” monuments, such as a museum or other sites “where they can be placed in their proper historical context from a dark period of American history.”

J.C. Hanna, commander of the Louisiana division of the Sons of Confederate veterans, told the Times-Picayune that he doesn’t think the monuments should be moved, “period.”

“I don't know of anywhere else in New Orleans they could be put where they'd have a place of respect. I really don’t,” he said.

“There's an idea that (they) represent southern heritage,” Marcus Cox, a professor specializing in African-American civil and military history at Xavier University in New Orleans, told the Times-Picayune. “I just have to guess for someone who wants to believe that, it must be real. It certainly is not the case for a good percentage of the population.”

But he agrees they should remain in Louisiana.

“You shouldn't go back and rewrite history,” he told the Times Picayune. “That is United States history, it’s southern history. But I think that when you have those types of symbols in public spaces that are controversial or tend to offend people, you need to have that open dialogue. It makes people uncomfortable, and they don't want to learn from their mistakes.”

In some cases — Alabama, for example — state law prohibits local governments from removing Confederate monuments. In Birmingham, where some of the bloodiest battles in the 1960s civil rights movement took place, the mayor responded by ordering that monuments be covered. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall sued the city, not in defense of the monuments, he told NPR, but because the mayor broke the law.

Some people have argued for crushing the Civil War iconography, though historians generally agree the monuments should be preserved and displayed in proper historical context. What that should look like is a matter of wide disagreement, though.

Sheffield Hale, president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta History Center, told CNN monuments should be displayed as “pieces of history or artifacts instead of objects of veneration.”

“These objects are inherently problematic, and that’s why they’re potentially effective teaching tools,” Hale said. “They provoke conversation about a period that a lot of people have forgotten about or don’t want to talk about.”

Such context would debunk the “lost cause” ideology that suggests states’ rights, rather than slavery and racism, was the driving force behind their secession from the Union.

‘White Men Are In Charge’

Interestingly, most monuments went up well after the Civil War ended, in the early 1920s and again around mid-century, during periods of racial unrest following a Supreme Court ruling allowing “separate but equal” facilities, Jim Crow policies and more than 4,000 lynchings of black people in the Deep South.

“On the surface, they were memorials to the Confederacy and their heroes,” Karen L. Cox, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, told PolitiFact. “Yet, they were built during a period of racial violence and strong beliefs about Anglo-Saxon (i.e. white) supremacy.

“The fact that they were placed on the grounds of county and state courthouses was intentional,” she said. “The message: White men are in charge.”

Contextualizing monuments where they stand does little to ease racial tensions and is “in many cases a giant middle finger to communities in which they sit,” Anne Sarah Rubin, a history professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of “Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March and American Memory,” told CNN.

“Monuments were never fully representative of the localities they were put up in,” Rubin said. “They were put up to send messages and create false narratives about what the war was about and who should be celebrated.”

The University of Texas removed a larger-than-life statue of Jefferson Davis from a prominent spot on campus in 2015 amid intense debate over Confederate symbols following white supremacist Dylann Roof’s shooting rampage at the South Carolina church. The Davis statue ultimately moved to the Briscoe Center for American History, where the exhibit centers more about how the statute came to be, controversies surrounding it and its removal than about Davis’ life.

“The question is whether you preserve this historical information in a commemorative setting or in an educative setting,” Ben Wright, the associate director of the center and the exhibit’s curator, told USA Today.

“The presence of the statue in an educational exhibit, as opposed to a place of honor, underlines that Davis, as well as his ideas and actions, are no longer commemorated by the university.”

In Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America, leaders initially planned to add a small plaque to its famous Monument Avenue, which critics said would have no meaningful effect, but a commission appointed by Mayor Levar Stoney is now considering removal or relocation of Confederate statues lining the boulevard.

The University of Mississippi added the following language in a plaque for a 1906 statue of a Confederate soldier:

“As Confederate veterans were dying in increasing numbers, memorial associations across the South built monuments in their memory. These monuments were often used to promote an ideology known as the ‘Lost Cause,’ which claimed that the Confederacy had been established to defend states’ rights and that slavery was not the principal cause of the Civil War. Residents of Oxford and Lafayette County dedicated this statue, approved by the university, in 1906.

“Although the monument was created to honor the sacrifice of local Confederate soldiers, it must also remind us that the defeat of the Confederacy actually meant freedom for millions of people. On the evening of September 30, 1962, this statue was a rallying point for opponents of integration.

“This historic statue is a reminder of the university’s divisive past. Today, the University of Mississippi draws from that past a continuing commitment to open its hallowed halls to all who seek truth, knowledge, and wisdom.”

Abolitionist Honored In Charleston

The fervor over monuments presents an opportunity to reimagine public spaces, for example by putting cool public art on empty pedestals, or to erect statues honoring those who fought against slavery and oppression.

In 1976 — almost 40 years before Roof opened fire at the Charleston church and reignited debate over the appropriateness and role of Confederate monuments — the city hung a portrait of abolitionist Denmark Vesey in a prominent performing arts venue.

More prominently, a statue of Vesey, a free black man who was hanged in 1822 after he was convicted of plotting a slave revolt, was installed in Charleston’s Hampton Park in 2014. It depicts Vesey with carpenter’s tools in one hand and a Bible in the other.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images News/Getty Images