But it was the mass protests over the police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, that sped action along. For example, in June 2015, a white supremacist shot and killed nine people during a Bible study at a historically black church. Not just statues were erected during this period, either. … Neither was about celebrating America. The statue was commissioned in 1917 and erected in Charlottesville in 1924 Credit: AP:Associated Press. Economy (This was swiftly challenged in court and is under a ten-day injunction.) 1911 was a big year for putting up Confederate monuments in a number of states; across the South, numerous statues were erected during the Jim Crow era. The mere idea of removing the statues, however, has activated people who say they want to “preserve” the monuments, arguing that it is “un-American” to remove them. What Will New Casino Bring to Norfolk, Pamunkey Tribe? Rashid: Why Would You Let Someone Steal Your Money Every Year? Ralph Northam announced last week that he would be removing the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert Lee, which sits on Monument Avenue in Richmond. Virginia, once the capital of the Confederacy, has more than 200 statues honoring the side that lost the Civil War. In the meantime, protesters in Richmond and other Virginia cities have pulled down statues themselves, including a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. June 11, 2020 2:41 pm EDT. Instead their very survival depends on operating in a clear-eyed reality where systemic racial oppression shapes their lives now and then.”. What Will New Casino Bring to Norfolk, Pamunkey Tribe. There's been a lot of discussion lately about whether Confederate monuments and memorials should remain in public spaces. Or as James Boyd, the NAACP chapter president for Portsmouth, another city discussing how their Confederate statues will come down, said: “People are just tired of being sick and tired.” Boyd added that the monuments represent more than 400 years of oppression. “These statues were erected, in essence, as a reminder to the community that Southern order and Southern culture depended upon white supremacy,” Grossman says. Questions Remain in Police Shooting. So, why were Confederate monument erected in the first place? Jim Crow laws legalized segregation in many states, and essentially made it completely OK for white citizens to discriminate or enact violence against black citizens. Following the landmark Brown versus Board of Education decision in 1954, which said maintaining racially segregated schools was unconstitutional, there was an uptick in the number of colleges and schools named after Confederate soldiers and generals: From 1954 to 1970, at least 45 were named after Confederates. They were built as … "Tributes to the Confederacy — placing statues, naming streets and other public facilities — were part of the Lost Cause ideology that focused on an idyllic era of stately mansions, beautiful women, and gallant Confederate officers," Charles S. Bullock, III, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia, told Politifact. According to the AHA, most Confederate monuments were erected during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, and this undertaking was "part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South." He thought they would make it harder for the country to heal. In this moment of reckoning around the country, monuments to confederate heroes have also tumbled or been targets of vandalism, most of which were erected decades after the Civil War. In short they imply that racism was the prime motive for Confederate monument-building. Houseless Residents Say They Were Evicted Without Warning in Richmond. They also did not go up during Reconstruction (1865-1877), a period during which the federal government, with greater or lesser success and enthusiasm, tried to make good on the emancipatory vision of Union victory (that without ending slavery and protecting the rights of African Americans, the war would have been fought in vain). The COVID-19 Vaccine is Available in Virginia. Many people may be surprised to learn that most of these Confederate monuments and statues were erected more than 35 years after the Civil War ended. More statues were targeted following protests over the police killing of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, on May 25, 2020. While those innocent individuals were being mourned, Confederate flags, symbols of slavery and oppression, were still being flown at the South Carolina statehouse. Activists and some political leaders have tried for years to remove them. In the past week, confederate statues have been in the spotlight. As Prof. Michael Dickinson, an expert in African American history at Virginia Commonwealth University, explained, there were “two primary motivations” for the people who put up Confederate statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond. All rights reserved. While some may argue that the monuments are an important way to preserve American history, many of the statues that depict Civil War heroes were not erected until decades after the war had already ended. Confederate monuments may be a part of history, but not the part of history that most people probably associate them with. The historic mass uprisings throughout Virginia against police brutality and racial injustice might make you think almost everyone supports the removal of the state’s Confederate monuments. Statues of Confederate heroes were not erected immediately after the war. VETERAN. Many southerners claim Confederate monuments are a representation of their history and were erected to honor Civil War heroes. Blevins' "Forever in Mourning" Chart of Union and Confederate Monuments, 1860-1920 . According to many historians, they were constructed with a very particular political agenda, something that should definitely be taken into account when debating their removal. 2021 Bustle Digital Group. Wikipedia has a partial list here. Many southerners claim Confederate monuments are a representation of their history and were erected to honor Civil War heroes. “The first was to help perpetuate the ‘Lost Cause’ narrative of the Civil War,” Dickinson said in an interview. A damaged nearly century-old Confederate statue li A damaged nearly century-old Confederate statue lies on a pallet in a warehouse in Durham, N.C. on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017. "They were built during a period of racial violence and strong beliefs about Anglo-Saxon supremacy," Karen L. Cox, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said. Meghan McCarthy, Originally Published After the "Unite the Right" rally, which was started in opposition of the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, turned violent in Charlottesville, other officials across the country began removing statues in their own cities. But it was the mass protests over the police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, that sped action along. Chris Canipe, Haley Britzky. “And it took what is in effect a mass uprising of the community to say these things are not acceptable.”. is a national editor with COURIER and she helped found Dogwood. Meghan was also a reporter at National Journal, and her work has been featured on CSPAN, MSNBC, NPR, New York Times, and Washington Post. But given that Jim Crow laws, which attempted to disenfranchise black Americans, were being enacted in the South around this time, the statues also had a more sinister meaning. It’s from the Southern Poverty Law Center, and it shows us when all those Confederate monuments and statues were erected: This illustrates something that even a lot of liberals don’t always get. Social Justice Remove them great heroes and history! ” Residents Say they were Evicted Without Warning in.., when New Orleans finished tearing down four Confederate monuments may be a symbol of supremacy. 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