Other Voices to Consider
The past several weeks have been a deluge of information and opinions on Confederate monuments, memorialization, and how we choose to remember such a divisive time in our nation's history. Here's some of the things we've been reading, listening to, and thinking about.
Why those Confederate soldier statues look a lot like their Union counterparts
“Many of the South’s Silent Sentinels turn out to be identical to the statues of Union soldiers that decorate hundreds of public spaces across the North. Identical, but for one detail: On the soldier’s belt buckle, the “U.S.” is replaced by a “C.S.” for “Confederate States.””
“For many, the memory of the war proved as polarizing as the war itself. Bitter debates over the placement and meaning of monuments emerged as early as 1865 in the North and the South. And these debates revealed time after time that there has never been a single historical interpretation of what the Civil War meant — for Unionists or Confederates, for black or white.”
“General William Mahone has not been forgotten entirely. Rather, he has been selectively remembered. There is a Mahone Monument, for example, erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy, at the Crater Battlefield in Petersburg, and Civil War scholars have treated Mahone’s military career with respect. There is an able biography. The problems posed by William Mahone for many Virginians in the past — and what makes it worthwhile for us to think about him in the present — lie in his postwar career.”
“But the story of the monuments is even stranger than many people realize.”
Museum CEO Christy Coleman was interviewed on NPR's Code Switch.
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