Confederate statues constructed decades, or even close to a century, after the US Civil War? As much as I love reading about history, I sometimes wonder the point. But the mysterious case of the Confederate Statues almost feels like a mystery story. If the south wanted to honor its dead, I felt that perhaps it was right to keep the statues up.
Then I heard when the statues were erected.
Many of the statues honoring the Confederate leaders and fighters were erected half a century after the Civil War, concurrent with renewed or challenged segregation. More compelling, some confederate statues were put up during the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, almost a century after the end of the Civil War.
A half a century after the civil war? That timing makes it seem less like honoring the dead, and more about celebrating the cause. What cause? "Negro" inferiority. In other words, celebrating or supporting the tremendous suffering of human beings.
Excuse me while I vomit.
Because segregation wasn't "separate but equal"or a benign "southern culture": it was murder. Lynching was used brutally to support a system in which skin color trumped ability and character. Segregation was daily humiliation, the insulting of children, the permitted abuse of every African American. And before that, slavery : legal kidnapping in chains, the separation by ownership of parents from children, whipping.
I might be able too support a few confederate monuments IF they were constructed when white southerners were mourning their dead shortly after the Civil War. Even then, it is offensive, but I'm willing to compromise that much.
Challenge me: look up for yourself when Confederate statues and monuments were put up. Then ask yourself what it was like to be black at the time.
The study of history can be relevant to the present.
