Eclipsing the Statues

So, there was a complete eclipse over a 70-mile-wide swath of our country today. The rest of us reveled (suffered?) with 60 – 80% coverage of Moon invasion. I was outside for about an hour and, yes, it was pretty cool to see.

At the end of my work day, I needed to stop at the bank. The teller was friendly and asked if I had seen the eclipse. I acknowledged seeing it and she asked, “Was it cool?”  That told me she didn’t see it.  Talking to another of the bank employees later, she said that a couple of them think they saw it looking out the window. Of course a bank can’t let its employees abandon stations to look skyward, but it made me think.

Recently, I had a conversation with a gentleman who would be well known by Michigan football fans. As I didn’t get his permission, I don’t feel right mentioning his name. He was a very successful running back for the Wolverines and has remained in Ann Arbor. We see each other a couple of times a week at a favorite lunch stop. He’s African-American – and that does matter to the story.

He was finishing a big plate of greens and I was working my way through a Greek salad – we routinely discuss sports, Ann Arbor politics, his daughter – just stuff. I asked him what he thought about the destruction of Confederate monuments currently in the news.

He described his youth in a Southern state where the statues were prevalent throughout his hometown. He recalls that his grandmother told him they were there to keep him and “our people” down. He said that the statues were placed deliberately as a warning to the Black community that things could return to the antebellum ways of slavery. He referenced the well known epitaph: "The South shall rise again" as part of the overall intimidation.

This is a subject that I’ve spent very little time considering. I do remember wondering why a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest – a Confederate general and key figure in the founding of the Ku Klux Klan stood in a prominent spot in Memphis – my adoptive home for six years. I guess what I really wondered was why it “still” stood in the 1990s.

My friend suggested that if I was interested, I look into when many of these statues were erected.

I know that I can be anecdotally refuted on the margins, but what I found was that most were erected in close proximity after two major Supreme Court decisions.  The first, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) created the “separate but equal” standard that solidified segregation practices that existed through much (most?) of the 20^th Century. The second was Brown v. Board of Education (1954) which overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson findings of “separate but equal.”  

This was the Warren Court and it ruled unanimously (9-0) that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” In other words, segregation was ruled a violation of the 14^th Amendment (Equal Protection Clause).

After each decision, there was a spate of statue erections honoring Confederate figures (see https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/the-stubborn-persistence-of-confederate-monuments/479751/). My comment to my friend was, “This has never been on my radar screen.”

“Why would it?” he replied. The timing of the constructions did underscore the probable intention of intimidation.

This isn’t, mind you, a zero-sum game.  Not every allusion to the history of the Confederacy should be deboned. We can’t afford to forget our nation’s history – no matter how pained. But when there is likely intention of intimidation and, perhaps, even blatant racism, we should address it.  Destroy everything? Nope. Keep everything for “history’s sake?”  Nope.

Each local community needs to address their public statuary in the full, uneclipsed light of their history and intention.

Other voices:

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/the-real-story-of-all-those-confederate-statues/

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450470/charlottesville-virignia-robert-e-lee-statue-remove-right-decision-confederate-monuments-museums

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/15/us/confederate-memorial-removal-us-trnd/index.html

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450551/confederate-statues-republicans-democrats-should-let-them-be

http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/historian-hypocritical-statue-obsession-smug-generation/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/why-i-changed-my-mind-about-confederate-monuments/537396/




Pictures from:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2017/07/how-to-photograph-solar-eclipse/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-rally-protest-statue.html