Historic statue removal

Pro 1: These statues misrepresent history, glorifying people who perpetuated slavery and seceded from the country.

When 11 Southern states seceded from the Union in 1861, they were very clear that the reason was the impending abolition of slavery. Mississippi’s secession declaration states, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.…There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.” [15] [16]

However, after the Confederate States lost the Civil War, the South revised history. The states declared they had not been fighting to preserve slavery and, instead, “fashioned a set of ideas and arguments that they were fighting to hold back the massive industrialization of America, they were trying to preserve rural agrarian civilization,” according to David W. Blight, American history professor at Yale University. [17] [18]

The “Lost Cause” mythology was used to continue the idea that Black people needed to be subjugated for their own good and as justification for Jim Crow laws. Erecting statues to the lost heroes of the Lost Cause was part of the campaign to revise history. [14] [17]

Other statues of historic figures, such as slave-owning presidents or imperialists like Christopher Columbus, promote similar oppressive and revisionist messages. Glenn Foster, founder of the Freedom Neighborhood, states of the Emancipation Memorial, which depicts Abraham Lincoln over a kneeling freed enslaved person, “When I look at that statue, I’m reminded my freedom and my liberation is only dictated by white peoples’ terms. We’re trying to let the government know we’re not going to wait any longer for our freedom to happen.” Celebrations of Columbus have long been criticized due to his colonization and genocide of Indigenous people, as well as the false narrative that he discovered America when he never set foot on North America. [19] [20] [21]

These statues, like their Confederate counterparts, serve a revisionist purpose, allowing people to maintain a racist ideology.

Pro 2: These statues are racist and offensive and pay homage to hate.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, notes that “enduringly charged symbols of the former Confederacy.…[add] to our fears that, instead of embracing the promise of democracy in a diverse society, some want to return us to a far more restrictive time, when freedom was circumscribed by race.” [22]

“We can’t get to learning from our history if we keep accepting that racism should be celebrated in American history,” according to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard University. [1]

The statues were built to honor and enforce white supremacist views, and the intent or damaging effect have not been erased by time.

A Black resident of Richmond, Virginia, Tommye Finley, remarks of the city’s Monument Avenue, which is home to five Confederate statues, “When I first moved here from Mississippi, I thought these statues were ridiculous. Why build a street for losers?…Psychologically, it’s perpetuating a system. It’s saying, ‘We still have the upper hand.’ ” [23]

Finley hit not only on the current psychological impact of the statues but also on the intended historical impact. As James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, notes, “It’s not just that the statues represent white supremacy, but the purpose of building the statues was the perpetuation of white supremacy. This is why they put them up in the first place; to affirm the centrality of white supremacy to Southern culture.”[1]

Because the statues were intended to promote white supremacy, Richard Rose, president of Atlanta’s NAACP, argues, “You can’t contextualize racism or compromise on racism.” He states that the contextualization plaques added to Atlanta’s Confederate statues “establish that racism is valid.”[24]

The statues still appeal to white supremacists, as demonstrated by the 2017 rally to defend the Lee and Jackson statues in Virginia and in the pre-massacre tour of plantations and a Confederate museum conducted by Dylann Roof, the mass murderer responsible for the Charleston church shooting in 2015.[4]

Monuments are ultimately about which values we want to honor and put on public display. For example, the Confederate statues in the Capitol building “should embody our highest ideals as Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be as a nation. Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals. Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed,” according to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). [23] [25]

Further, Americans pay to have Confederate statues and the associated values on display. A 2018 investigation published in the Smithsonian Magazine found that over the prior 10 years, at least $40 million in taxpayer dollars were allocated for Confederate statues, other monuments, and heritage organizations. [4]

As Karen Cox, historian of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, concludes, “The state is giving the stamp of approval to these Lost Cause ideas, and the money is a symbol of that approval. What does that say to Black citizens of the state, or other citizens, or to younger generations?” [4]

Pro 3: These statues should be replaced with monuments that reflect the country’s historic progress and diversity.

Of about 5,193 public statues of people in the United States, only 394 are of women, and far fewer are of Black Americans or other people of color.[26]

George Gerbner and Larry Gross coined the term “symbolic annihilation” in 1976 to describe the lack of representation of a group of people. Symbolic annihilation can result in society valuing certain groups less, internalizing negativity toward those groups. Statues celebrating the diversity of the country could help remedy symbolic annihilation of Black Americans, women, and other groups. [27] [28]

A petition in Tennessee gained 22,736 signatures (and counting, as of July 8, 2020) to replace all Confederate statues in the state, including the statue of Confederate Army general and KKK grand wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest that stands in the state’s capitol building, with statues of Dolly Parton. [29] [30]

Walmart donated $100,000 to help Arkansas replace statues of Confederate sympathizers Governor James P. Clarke and attorney Uriah Rose in the U.S. Capitol with statues of Johnny Cash and civil rights pioneer Daisy Bates. [31]

In Louisville, Kentucky, a statue of Confederate soldier John Breckinridge Castleman was removed. Residents offered replacement suggestions ranging from boxer Muhammad Ali to writer Wendell Berry. A monument to the victims of slavery has also been suggested. [26] [32]

Statues could be built to honor George Washington Carver, Madam C.J. Walker, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Owens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ruby Bridges, Mae Jemison, Charles Richard Drew, Mary Jackson, and countless others. A 1908 confederate memorial in front of the DeKalb County Courthouse in Decatur, Georgia, was removed in 2020, and in 2024 it was replaced with a statue of Civil Rights icon John Lewis. [60]

Beyond building monuments to honor Black Americans, monuments could employ and elevate living Black artists, such as Kehinde Wiley, whose 2019 “Rumors of War” statue depicts a Black man on horseback in a pose reminiscent of statues of Robert E. Lee. [32] [33]