Removing monuments to white supremacism

Across the South, in response to racist violence, protesters and city officials have taken down statues of Confederate leaders and soldiers — 36 in 2017 and 26 so far in 2020. Over 700 Confederate monuments remain. History can help us understand why their removal is critical.

In winter 1860-61, Southern state legislatures, dominated by slaveowners, began declaring secession from the USA. The secessionists believed that newly-elected U.S. president Abraham Lincoln and his Republican Party would try to abolish slavery. To preserve slavery, the secessionists established a separate country, the Confederate States of America (CSA). In April 1861, after Confederate forces attacked two U.S. forts, President Lincoln ordered U.S. troops to crush the rebellion.

After four years and 750,000 deaths, the Civil War ended with CSA surrender. U.S. troops remained in the South to enforce the Constitution, which was amended to ban slavery, provide equal protection for blacks, and give black men the right to vote. But as U.S. troops gradually withdrew, Southern whites used terrorism to re-establish white supremacist rule and racist segregation.

Most Confederate monuments went up between 1900 and 1940, not as a response to the Civil War tragedy, which was 35 years past, but to reinforce white supremacy. The primary sponsor was the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), a racist organization that romanticized the brutal slave system and praised the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups.

UDC members also attempted to rewrite history, especially in schoolbooks. They insisted that secession had not been about preserving slavery. Confederate soldiers, they said, fought to defend “states’ rights,” meaning powers held by individual states rather than the federal government. But in reality, slaveowners had been very much against states’ rights when Northern states refused to comply with federal laws on returning runaway slaves.

Earlier Confederate memorials had been placed in graveyards. The UDC put up celebratory statues in more prominent spaces, like courthouses and town squares. The most common icons were Gen. Robert E. Lee, who quit the U.S. Army to fight against it, and Jefferson Davis, a slaveowner who quit the U.S. Senate to lead the CSA. (Idaho has a Robert E. Lee Creek and the town of Leesburg.)

The UDC’s message to whites was that these men who committed treason against the USA in order to defend slavery were heroic figures. The message to blacks was one of intimidation: White supremacists rule the South, and federal civil rights laws won’t protect you here.

A smaller wave of Confederate monument-building came in 1955-65, in response to the Civil Rights Movement. After the Supreme Court, in 1964, outlawed public school segregation, Southern whites defiantly named dozens of schools and colleges for Confederates as an insult to black students. Also in this period, the Georgia state flag was redesigned to include the treasonous Confederate battle flag, and South Carolina began flying the battle flag atop its capitol building.

Just recently, after the police murder of George Floyd, the Mississippi government removed the battle flag from its state flag. Previously, the U.S. Marines commander ordered all Confederate-related paraphernalia banned from Marine bases. The U.S. Army, though, still maintains ten bases named for Confederate soldiers who fought against the USA. All 10 are in the South, and all but one were established in the early 20th century, when the army was segregated and dominated by Southern whites.

Some people are concerned that removing Confederate symbols, including the Confederate-related names of schools, buildings, roadways, bodies of water, and military bases, is “erasing” history. Not to worry — over 60,000 books have been written about the Civil War, and more appear every year.

Rather than erase history, monument removal asks us to take history seriously, to understand what historical statues actually represent. For example, Christopher Columbus — another statue favorite and candidate for removal — didn’t “discover America.” He never even made it to what is now the USA. But he did initiate both the transatlantic slave trade and the Caribbean genocide — hardly something to honor.

Changing monuments doesn’t change history, it changes present emphasis. It says, in effect, that these old monuments do not represent our values and should be relegated to museums or landfills. Think of liberated Eastern Europeans pulling down Communist monuments. Recall how Iraqis toppled statues of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

Confederate monuments are despicable. They glorify white supremacism, slavery, treason, and violence. Their most vociferous defenders understand this. In 2017, Klan members and other white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Va., in defense of a Lee statue. They carried Confederate and Nazi flags, chanted racist and anti-Jewish slogans, and threatened violence. One white supremacist rammed his car into counter-protesters, killing one and injuring 19.

Removing Confederate statues is the right thing to do — assuming you want to promote human rights, antiracism, and the integrity of the USA.

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Timothy Braatz is a professor of history and nonviolence at Saddleback College. Previously, he taught at Southern Utah University and Arizona State University. He has a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Arizona State, and is the author of several books, including “Peace Lessons” and “From Ghetto to Death Camp: A Memoir of Privilege and Luck.” Locally, he wrote and directed the dramatic scenes for Vicki Thompson’s recent productions, “A Common Beat” and “Stardust!”