The political climate surrounding national monuments has been incredibly heated over the last couple years. It seems more and more people are perceiving certain statues and symbols as glorifying the civil war. What has legislation looked like in the past around these monuments and what are the current trends? Is what has been happening currently constitutional?
The Background
A monument is defined as a statue, building, or other structure erected to commemorate a notable person or event; or a building, structure or site of historical importance or interest. Where did the roughly 700 Confederate monuments come from? Most are a lot newer than one might think. To view examples of civil war monuments and national monuments go to the Nation Parks Service website. These types of monuments range from locations, such as the Gettysburg battlefield, to statues of figures, such as Robert E Lee.
After the Confederate defeat in the civil war, the depleted South did not have the money necessary to commission memorials. Because of this, the commission and dedication of monuments ranges from the 1890s to the 1950s, alongside the onslaught of Jim Crow laws in the south. While opposition to these monuments has always been present, it has been intensifying recently. Here is a graph from the Southern Poverty Law Center showing the timeline of the erection of these monuments:
Southern Poverty Law Center’s graph showing when Confederate monuments and statues were erected across the country.
For historical context, the two most popular periods for erecting these monuments were full of anti-black sentiment. In the early 1900s, states were enacting Jim Crow laws to segregate and disenfranchise black Americans. These laws led to the civil rights movement pushing back against the resulting segregation throughout the middle part of the 20th century.
Also notable is the fact that Confederate monuments were built before any of the approval procedures now commonly applied to public art and monuments were put in place. People who objected to the monuments at the time did not have a realistic opportunity to voice their opposition. This means the private groups who helped created the monuments, like the Daughters of the Confederacy, were able to create national monuments in public spaces without any established approval process or formal public debate.
The Issue
Many people have started viewing civil war monuments as celebrating the Confederacy, which fought, amongst other things, to maintain slavery in the US. Many people feel defending slavery isn’t something the country should honor or commemorate in any way. Critics argue taking these down is akin to erasing part of history and Southern pride.
Here is a list from the New York Times of monuments that have been taken down since the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville on Aug 12, 2017.
The Bills
There are many more state bills than federal bills on the topic of Confederate Monuments, reflecting the local sentiment inherent in these debates.
The Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2016 disallowed any relocation, removal, alteration, renaming, rededication, or otherwise disturbing any statues, monuments, plaques or other dedicated items. Along with forbidding any changes, it also made the requirement of a “simple majority” (a two-thirds majority) vote of the Tennessee Historical Commission to approve the removal of any monument or change.
The Louisiana Military Memorial Conservation Act bars all structures, plaques, statues or monuments marking certain US wars, including the Civil War, from being “altered, removed, relocated, or destroyed.” It only allows local governments to take down a memorial if voters approve the action at “an election held for that purpose.” The bill also allows for the state to take action to protect, preserve or repair a memorial.
TX HB1359 allowed monuments to be erected on land owned or acquired by the state or an institution of higher education. Anyone who intentionally removes, relocates or alters a monument or memorial is committing a criminal offense. The punishment for this is a fine no less than $50 and no more than $1,000 and confinement in jail for a term of no less than three days and no more than one year. The bill requires any monument that is legally removed to be relocated to an equally prominent location approved by the legislature, the Texas Historical Commission or the State Preservation Board.
Mississippi had two different bills aimed at trying to encourage flying the state flag, containing the flag of the Confederacy within it, at colleges and universities. The first senate bill tried to give incentive to public universities to “prominently display and fly the state flag each day of the year” to qualify for tax exemptions. The second bill sought to withhold 25% of a university administrative head’s salary if his or her school didn’t fly the flag. For more information on issues with the Confederate history in the United States, read this blog.
The Alabama Memorial Preservation Act aims to prohibit the relocation, removal, alteration, renaming or any other disturbance of monuments located on public property that have been in place for 20 or more years. The bill also puts forth mechanisms for the relocation, removal, alteration, renaming, or other disturbance of monuments and the renaming of certain memorial streets, architecturally significant buildings and memorial buildings. Finally, the bill creates the Committee on Alabama Monument Protection to oversee all of the proceedings involving monuments. These types of bills gained national attention from the events in Charlottesville earlier this year — more about the events and the legislation surrounding Charlottesville here.
My Concluding Thoughts
There are many countries that have had to deal with inappropriate statues and historic items, and it is difficult to figure out exactly what is the most appropriate way to go about it. Countries like Taiwan, Ukraine, South Africa and Germany have all had to reckon with their history and monuments and tributes paid to people and times that did not exemplify an idea of where the countries wanted to move forward to.
Once honored as “the George Washington of Taiwan”, monuments to Chiang Kai-Shek are being re-examined from a modern point of view, and being retired to Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park where they can be viewed as cultural artifacts. Ukraine chose to remove and/or destroy 1,069 Soviet-era monuments and 1,320 statues of Lenin. Many places with Soviet-era names and tributes have been renamed after Ukrainian heroes. They even chose to pay homage to the Beatles — changing a Lenin Street to Lennon Street in Zakarpattia. In Germany, you will not find statutes or tributes commemorating the Nazis and Hitler; they were removed as thoroughly as possible after the war. The underground bunker Hitler used is simply marked by a small sign outside a parking lot. “One reason for not preserving Hitler’s bunker was that it was feared that the site might become a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis; a place of violence and shameless celebration of a history that should be shameful,” NPR’s Maggie Penman reported.
It would be one thing if our monuments were commissioned during “appropriate” time periods that did not so closely align with times of particularly virulent anti-black sentiment in the US. Although these monuments were established many, many years ago, it makes me feel uncomfortable finding out that they were erected by private groups on public land without the public getting a chance to weigh in.
I believe there is no issue with creating appropriate spaces to relocate the monuments. This way, memorials can be preserved and presented in context. We can then accurately inform and educate people about our history and how we as a country want to move forward from a dark, dark time in our history.
I do not believe the idea that “If we cease to learn from history and don’t have reminders, we are doomed to repeat it.” I prefer the thought, “To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our more prominent places — in honor — is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, is an affront to our present and it is a bad prescription for our future.”
Cover Photo by Dean Hinnant on Unsplash
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