The Dismantling of Confederate Remnants Continues

[Berzerker]

I agree. I also take Confederate flags and monuments as a distant, implicit warning, because they venerate people who would have been eager to shoot me, if I'd been alive back then. If I see a Confederate flag or monument, I see a ghostly "watch your step" sign hovering beneath it. If that's the intention of the people displaying those symbols, then I suppose we're on the same page and I can just get myself out of town as quickly as possible.

Well, in my case the eagerness would have been somewhat mutual. Of course, if you think this way imagine how a lot of African Americans must feel about it.

Black comedian said he sees a confederate flag at the gas station, he goes elsewhere

 

[The Strategos]

I grew up in a place where the nearest town has a confederate monument. The monument is protected by state law (unless said law has been repealed without my knowledge) which states that only the NC legislature has the power to remove any memorial. It stands in front of the county courthouse and was erected in 1902, on the early end of the first Confederate monument craze.

Let me deal with the artistic argument first, so that I can get to what I really want to say. These monuments were mass-produced and sold out of catalogues. They were Confederate kitsch. Because of their age they might be of interest to collectors, much like there are people who collect buttons, but just like that doesn't make buttons art, lets not fool ourselves into thinking these Confederate monuments are art. (Now some might be, but that is an individual judgment, not something to be granted up front to all of them).


It is important to not confuse history, nostalgia, and propaganda. Just because they all interact with the past, it does not follow that they all interact properly with the past. Confederate monuments are rarely teaching the first (and the ones that do are mostly found in battlefields), usually the second, and almost always the third. Let's take the monument I grew up near as an example, two lines in particular.

"THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER WON AND IS ENTITLED TO THE ADMIRATION OF ALL WHO LOVE HONOR, AND LIBERTY."
and
"IN APPRECIATION OF OUR FAITHFUL SLAVES"

You cannot separate when the monument was erected, with its purpose. During this time, Jim Crow laws were being passed in North Carolina (one such law passed a year before our monument was erected stated, no child with "Negro blood in its veins, however remote the strain, shall attend a school for the white race, and no such child shall be considered a white child). As late as the 1896 the Republican-Populist "fusion" party, which had African Americans as a core constituency, was the party in power. 1898 the Democrats ran a explicitly white-supremacy platform which won. Read the Chairman of the Democratic Party's editorial in the Raleigh News and Observer:

"The battle has been fought, the victory is within our reach. North Carolina is a WHITE MAN'S State, and WHITE MEN will rule it, and they will crush the party of negro domination [the fusion party] beneath a majority so overwhelming that no other party will ever again dare to attempt to establish negro rule here.

They CANNOT intimidate us; they CANNOT buy us, and they SHALL NOT cheat us out of the fruits of our victory." (emphasis his)

Later on he mentions that it is only white rule over African-Americans that can cause peace between the races. Now look at our confederate memorial put up just a couple years after the victory of the Democrats. You can almost feel the Jim Crow judgment as you read "faithful slaves" and the resulting rhetorical standard with which to judge their former slaves' descendants who needed to relearn their proper place. The fusionists had temporary upended the "proper" order. The Confederates (and the memorial self-identifies the ones who erected it as Confederates) are rhetorically reconstructing their history into a nostalgic pseudo-past where their white ancestors paternalistically ruled over obedient slaves.

It is no wonder that the Confederate monument declares "the Confederate soldier won." The election of 1898 ushered in an explicitly white rule in North Carolina not seen since the Civil War. The Confederate and Confederate sympathizers who put the monument in front of the courthouse were not putting up a historical marker. They were mythologizing the past and placing a piece of white propaganda in front of the place where law and justice was dispensed (I don't think the symbolism of their chosen location was lost on them).

If these Confederate monuments are to be viewed as markers of our historical heritage, it is not of the Civil War but rather a historical heritage to the propaganda and self-identity of the later Jim Crow South. By leaving them alone, you are allowing their propaganda to stand unchallenged on public land.


You can see the full text of the monument to which I am referring and see pictures of it here.

 

[innonimatu]

Interesting information, I can see how those monuments are considered offensive now. Still don't like the idea of destroying historical marks, but it's easy to understand why people want to move these things away from prominent places.

 

[W|M]

It is no wonder that the Confederate monument declares "the Confederate soldier won." The election of 1898 ushered in an explicitly white rule in North Carolina not seen since the Civil War. The Confederate and Confederate sympathizers who put the monument in front of the courthouse were not putting up a historical marker. They were mythologizing the past and placing a piece of white propaganda in front of the place where law and justice was dispensed (I don't think the symbolism of their chosen location was lost on them).

Some All of those who work forces are the same that burn crosses

 

[EgonSpengler]

CNN, 24 April 2017 - New Orleans begins controversial removal of Confederate monuments

In the dark of night, workers wearing masks and tactical vests arrived Monday at New Orleans' Battle of Liberty Place monument to take it down.
Police snipers were positioned on nearby rooftops, according to The Times-Picayune newspaper, and the trucks and equipment used in the operation had company names covered by cardboard and black tape.

The controversial removal was the first of four scheduled relocations of Confederate memorials in the city, despite weeks of opposition from pro-monument groups and threats against workers.

I decided to do some quick, Google- and Wikipedia-assisted research, because I'd never heard of the "Battle of Liberty Place" and I wanted to see what some folks were upset about. That is, what the monument is commemorating.

The Battle of Liberty Place, or Battle of Canal Street, was an attempted insurrection by the Crescent City White League against the Reconstruction Louisiana state government on September 14, 1874, in New Orleans, where the capital of Louisiana was at that time. Five thousand members of the White League, a paramilitary organization of the Democratic Party, made up largely of Confederate veterans, fought against the outnumbered Metropolitan Police and state militia.

In 1891, the city erected a monument to commemorate and praise the insurrection from the Democratic Party point of view, which at the time was in firm political control of the city and state and was in the process of disenfranchising most blacks. The white marble obelisk was placed at a prominent location on Canal Street. In 1932, the city added an inscription that expressed a white supremacist view.

and

The White League, also known as the White Man's League,[1] was an American white paramilitary organization started in 1874 to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing.

Although sometimes linked to the secret vigilante groups, the Ku Klux Klan and Knights of the White Camelia, the White League and other paramilitary groups of the later 1870s marked a significant change.[4] They operated openly in communities, solicited coverage from newspapers, and the men's identities were generally known. Similar paramilitary groups were chapters of the Red Shirts, started in Mississippi in 1875 and active also in North and South Carolina. They had explicit political goals to overthrow the Reconstruction government. They directed their activities toward intimidation and removal of Northern and African American Republican candidates and officeholders. Made up of well-armed Confederate veterans, they worked to turn Republicans out of office, disrupt their political organizing, and use force to intimidate and terrorize freedmen to keep them from the polls.

So, to make it clear, this monument was constructed to honor an open, unashamed, terrorist organization dedicated to disenfranchising African-Americans by means of violence, and the construction workers taking it down have to conceal their identities and get police protection because of threats. In 2017. This isn't Afghanistan, this is Louisiana.

I can't say that I woke up this morning feeling great generosity of spirit toward the people today who try to defend symbols of the Confederacy as mere expressions of Southern pride, but the dismantling of these monuments to horror and terrorism can't happen fast enough. And Northerners had nothing to do with this; the people who voted to take these disgusting things down are Southerners, locals, probably many of them born and raised. CNN quotes Mitch Landrieu, Mayor of New Orleans and a native of the city: "This is about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile [our past] -- and most importantly -- choose a better future." The terrorists don't get to define Southern pride anymore.

 

[Broken_Erika]

The people who were against removing those monument are probably the ones who want to "Make America White Again"

 

[Lexicus]

Still don't like the idea of destroying historical marks

There's nothing "historical" about them, they are there to spread ahistorical mythological nonsense.

 

[rah]

I'm also not crazy about destroying historical marks but I'm more than willing to make an exception for these symbols of hate.

 

[EnglishEdward]

"THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER WON AND IS ENTITLED TO THE ADMIRATION OF ALL WHO LOVE HONOR, AND LIBERTY."
and
"IN APPRECIATION OF OUR FAITHFUL SLAVES"

I'd have thought people would be editing such monuments to more correctly read:
"THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER LOST THE ADMIRATION OF ALL WHO LOVE HONOR, AND LIBERTY."

 

[EgonSpengler]

The people who were against removing those monument are probably the ones who want to "Make America White Again"

Well, it was a monument to those people, so I suppose it makes sense that they're the ones who wanted to keep it.

I'm also not crazy about destroying historical marks but I'm more than willing to make an exception for these symbols of hate.

fwiw, the monument was disassembled rather than destroyed, and the article notes that it's being warehoused until the city decides what to do with it.

 

[rah]

As long as it's not on public display, I'm good with it.
I can't imagine what the city will decide

 

[Broken_Erika]

Exhibits for a Museum of Hate?

 

[rah]

I'd have no problem with it in a museum as long as it was accompanied by a write-up of what it actually stood for and for why it was removed from it's original location.

 

[metatron]

I appreciate the sentiment and overall i'm inclined to side with you, however the opposition in this thread does have a point.

If you blow up everything you never get to have this picture:

Spoiler :

Ms. Mardini, in case you're wondering.

 

[Cheetah]

I'd have no problem with it in a museum as long as it was accompanied by a write-up of what it actually stood for and for why it was removed from it's original location.

Like the park in one of the Baltic countries, where they are storing all the communist monuments!

Just find some southern swamp and put the confederate monuments there, fence it in, and put up some explanatory signs at the gates.

 

[Cheetah]

I'm also not crazy about destroying historical marks but I'm more than willing to make an exception for these symbols of hate.

I'm really big on keeping old stuff around, though I'm moderately okay with relocating it.

These aren't especially old however. There's not much important history connected to them, so I'd be quite okay with having them destroyed.

 

[Lexicus]

I can only wonder what the reaction would be if someone proposed constructing a monument to Al Qaeda, who have killed far fewer Americans than the Confederates ever did, in lower Manhattan.

 

[Cheetah]

That's literally what a lot of people think a mosque Muslim community centre is...

 

[Lexicus]

That's literally what a lot of people think a mosque Muslim community centre is...

Oh believe me, I know. Since I regard the Confederates as far worse criminals than Al Qaeda, I have been enjoying the irony for many years now.

 

[rah]

apples to oranges. Most of NYers have never been part of Al Qaeda. Or more accurately, had ancestors that were.