In the shadow of the historic COVID-19 pandemic, this nation’s persistent racism has again reared its ugly head. It came into sharp focus following the death in May of George Floyd in Minneapolis under a police officer’s knee, all captured on bodycam footage. Now, we’re all obligated to consider whether statues and memorials should be removed or modified with revised or updated histories that acknowledge transgressions as much as accomplishments. What do you think?
Sculpted likenesses and architectural showpieces memorializing known racist figures from the country’s past already have come tumbling down, some literally, in a murky cloud of revised history. Other inanimate objects—among them roads, schools, public and private buildings, parks, and military bases—are being, or already have been, renamed.
The question arises: Why don’t we just stop naming things after people? Two long-time friends and former publishing colleagues and I have been informally discussing this issue and the glaring lack of “nuance” in our current national conversation. We first agreed that no human being is or has been perfect, and many of them—immortalized in bronze and granite and other art media—have been downright menaces to society.
We acknowledged that in the nation’s early days, slavery was seen by many people of means as an economic necessity. It also had no real north/south boundary until much later, and the practice was often off-handedly referred to, tepidly and for the most part by politicians, as “the peculiar institution.” In the discussion, we all strongly concurred that slavery was “as wrong as wrong can get.” So, why does it continue to linger on the national conscience?
In that vein, we addressed the saga of Thomas Jefferson, at once the author of the Declaration of Independence and concurrently an owner of slaves himself. What a monstrous irony, we believed, thinking that Jefferson must have known he was doing something terribly wrong, even as he composed, as a member our little forum put it, “one of the planet’s most powerful and far-reaching statements of enlightened government.” We also agreed that “of all the problematic leading figures in American history, Jefferson best exemplifies the challenge we face in our efforts to make some sort of conscientious and honest sense of our past.”
Our best idea is to “retool” the Jefferson Memorial in Washington with a dominant interpretive message about his forever troubling legacy. Thus, all those monuments, statues, memorials, and plaques erected so many years ago could well live on if all included the entire stories of the imperfect people they’re meant to honor. This would, in effect, bring more attention to the human failings of the person so spotlighted than if the memorial had never been erected in the first place.
My personal cautionary stance on all this can’t help but be informed by having spent my entire early life in and around the national military park and cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. For several years I was an editor for a monthly magazine titled Civil War Times Illustrated, grappling regularly with the characterization of the South as having fought, justly and valiantly, for a “Lost Cause.” The key word here is “lost,” with “cause” meant to excuse the Confederacy for seceding from the Union in the name of “states’ rights.” There was nothing “just” about it, of course. Even so, I’d hate to see the park’s dynamic changed for the wrong reasons.
The mission at national military parks is to interpret the effects of the tactics ordered by the battle’s commanders as they saw fit. Hence, statues now stand, and some roads are named, to mark those officers’ combat positions. Removed from political context, Confederate General Robert E. Lee—who, after the battle, told the troops under his command, “It’s all my fault”—sits on horseback atop the Virginia Monument along Seminary Ridge on West Confederate Avenue, which follows the South’s front line on the third and decisive day of the battle. The outcome at Gettysburg easily could have led to a full-fledged Southern invasion of the North and thus dramatically changed the course of history. If the markers and monuments were eliminated, there would be little reason to have the military park at all.
Recently, Anne Arundel County illustrated what is being discussed here and how it might work. This past July, an official ceremony was held to rename a park in the Fourth Ward of Annapolis, once a bustling business district when African-American residents occupied (or were segregated to) that sector of the city. The area had also been the site of the 1906 lynching of a jailed Black man accused of assaulting a White woman. The park, which for years was named for a White first chairman of the Anne Arundel County Council, John Whitmore, now includes commemorative plaques to interpret the history of what was known as “the jewel of the Black community” and “the Black Belt.” Today, it is permanently known as “The People’s Park.”
How’s that for nuance? What do you think?
