In the wake of ongoing protests and riots sparked by the murder of George Floyd, numerous statues and monuments around the country have been targets of vandalism and destruction.
Understandably, most of the controversy has centered around the figures of various Confederate leaders. In Richmond, VA, two statues depicting Jefferson Davis, president of the CSA, and Williams Carter Wickham, a Confederate General, were torn down in early June. In Montgomery, Alabama, a statue of Robert E. Lee, found at a high school of the same name, was toppled. Countless more Confederate statues were destroyed or defaced across the South.
Let’s be very clear: these statues should not adorn our public spaces. They glorify traitors who died to defend the evil practice of slavery. However, their removal should not be at the whim of the mob. Local governments, not angry mobs, need to spearhead the process of removing statues.
Cities across the country have already taken action. On June 9th, Mayor Lenny Curry (R) of Jacksonville Florida, referenced his decision to remove a prominent Confederate statue and promised that, “…the other [Confederate Memorials] in this city, will be removed as well.” Just a few days earlier, on June 5th, Mayor Sandy Stimpson (R) of Mobile, Alabama released a tweet acknowledging his order to move a statue of Confederate Admiral Raphael Semmes from a prominent intersection.
But, the question of which statutes must be torn down is not as easy as: “If it’s Confederate, let’s tear it down.” These decisions must be made with a certain level of discretion. Monuments that celebrate pro-slavery traitors should be removed from America’s municipal buildings, parks, and schools. But take, for example, the State of Virginia Monument on the battlefields of Gettysburg, topped with an equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee. Here his statue serves as a historical reminder of the man who played a critical role in the battle, for better or for worse, not as a monument glorifying him in the public square. Such statues must be preserved to maintain the history of our nation, lest we forget the bloody battles of the Civil War and the men who fought in them. The context is important.
Further proving the necessity of governmental discretion, the mob’s attacks on statues have broadened beyond Confederate memorials and now target those depicting U.S. presidents, soldiers, and even Saints. A statue of Thomas Jefferson was toppled outside a high school in Portland, OR. In the same city a statue of George Washington was torn down, while another in Chicago’s Washington Park was vandalized. The American Museum of Natural History removed its famous bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt. In San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, a statue of Ulysses S. Grant was torn down, along with statues of St. Junipero Serra and Francis Scott Key. On July 4th, a statue of Frederick Douglass was destroyed in Albany, NY. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution, found in Philadelphia, was covered in spray paint, and the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial in Boston Common was defaced, as was a statue of Abigail Adams. These are just the most prominent examples. Such men and women have made invaluable contributions to the development of our nation and, through statuary, we rightly celebrate their accomplishments, though not deifying them or denying their (sometimes many) failings.
Though perhaps the most saddening example of this wave of destruction were the attempts to tear down the Emancipation Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington D.C. - a statue paid for by former slaves to memorialize the titular proclamation. Marcia Cole, a reenactor of Charlotte Scott, the first to contribute to the statue’s building, in an interview said, “If you look at the figure, it’s easy to say he’s on his knees, but,” she continues, “if you look closer, you will see that this man is rising. His chains are broken. His back is not bent... His eyes are looking forward. He's looking forward to a future of freedom.”
History is messy, as is art. Neither lends itself to easy, black and white answers, but rather, a scope of varying interpretations. One historian might read a figure favorably, and another unfavorably, just as someone might view the Emancipation Monument as the ascendance of former slaves, or as the glorification of a “white savior.” This gray zone necessitates the discretion of local governments, along with public dialogue and discernment. An ideologically possessed mob, in its rage, disregards the nuance, complexity, and depth surrounding the role and validity of these statues.