At the turn of the 20th century in Richmond, the men and women who built the commemorative landscape honored their heroes, vindicated their cause, and celebrated the virtues of the men represented by the statues. At the same time, these same men and women were also making manifest their politics of memory by building a segregationist state in Virginia.
Read MoreThe words on Confederate statues and those of the speakers at their dedications often say much about glory and nothing about race. Yet, we can miss the connection to race today if we do not draw back from the monuments to see the larger history ex-Confederates and others constructed, of which statues were only the most visible part.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreJohn Mitchell, Jr. abstained from voting on the appropriation of city money to fund the unveiling parade for the Robert E. Lee monument in 1890. Mitchell, a city alderman for Jackson Ward, a banker, and editor of the African American newspaper the Richmond Planet noted, tactfully, that he “was a great admirer of General Lee,” but demurred “by asking that those who wore the ‘clanging chains’ should be allowed to keep silent and not vote.” Other Council members thought that the city had no right “to get up a big parade to benefit only a certain class of people.”
Read MoreAfter the Civil War, many ex-Confederates claimed to be the most loyal and patriotic Americans. While loyalty to the Confederacy during the Civil War meant an intention to dismantle the United States, ex-Confederates and their descendants saw no inconsistency. Their declarations of loyalty to two nations across time made sense in their own history. It also mattered to their sense of their place in the modern United States. (Click title for more)
Read MoreVeneration was more than just nostalgia and gooey romanticism. Ex-Confederates and their descendants often used their history to actively define their place in the modern world—a world some of them embraced. But others despised it, and Confederate history—the Lost Cause—became a usable past in their hands. (Click title for more)
Read MoreThe funerary impulse that began at the close of the war—that desire to honor loved ones who had died—never really dissipated in the later age of Confederate celebration. For ex-Confederates, mourning, vindication, and celebration were inseparable in the effort to find meaning in loss and to prove that their sacrifices had not been in vain. From the effort grew an elaborate and multi-faceted explanation of the Civil War that we call the Lost Cause. (Click post title for more)
Read MoreThe Confederate statues on Monument Avenue, and those who originated them, spoke with one voice. Here, they claimed, are perfect exemplars of a cause not lost, with lessons for our own time. Yet that unity expressed on podiums and inscribed on the pedestals themselves belies great internal conflict among the white people who erected them at the turn of the Twentieth Century and the diversity of meaning that the monuments accrued for different people over time. The monuments themselves say little about larger contemporaneous discussions people had about defeat, race, politics, and life in Richmond, Virginia. (Click post title for more)
Read More