We begin with this article from Weldon, VA. “Weldon Police arrested an intoxicated driver early Sunday morning after driving his truck into a monument honoring the memory of Roanoke Valley Confederates who served. According to a press release from Lt. Melton with the Weldon Police Department, at about 3:15 a.m., Officer A. Dickens and Cpl. S. McKimmey responded to Maple and East Ninth streets regarding a vehicle accident call. Upon arrival, officers discovered a brown Toyota Tundra truck had hit the monument located in the middle of the intersection. According to research, the monument is 27 feet tall, with a statue of a soldier dressed in a Confederate States of America uniform holding a rifle atop the column. An inscription on the lower section of the column reads, ‘In memory of the Confederate soldiers and sailors of Halifax and Northampton counties,’ with the dates 1861-1865. The monument was erected by the Junius Daniel Chapter with the United Daughters of the Confederacy and was dedicated on Sept. 17, 1908, according to information. According to the WPD press release, an investigation found 25-year-old Solomon Emmanuel Bryant of Roanoke Rapids was intoxicated and driving under the influence. Photos submitted to the Herald showed the monument’s column landed on the vehicle’s front passenger side. The press release reads Bryant and a female passenger were not injured during the incident. Bryant was arrested for DWI, resist/obstruct/delay, damage to real property, and disorderly conduct. Bryant was given a $2,000 secured bond and an Oct. 9 court date. North Carolina State Highway Patrol assisted with the investigation.”
Next we have this essay from Dr. James Grossman, Executive Director of the American Historical Association. “Jesse Washington was lynched—burned to death—on May 15, 1916. It happened in Waco, Texas. I first read of this act of domestic terrorism more than three decades ago while doing research on my doctoral dissertation. I came across it again in December while working on my introduction to the plenary session at the recent annual meeting of the AHA, which took place in downtown Atlanta, a 15-minute walk from the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The center’s collections include an image of Jesse Washington’s corpse reproduced on a postcard that carries a message from its sender to his parents: ‘This is the Barbecue we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it.’ This is an important part of the American past. The moment bears no monument, no memorial other than this gruesome testimonial to a perverse form of popular entertainment (attendance estimates run as high as 15,000). Memorials to lynching are few and far between, despite its frequency during the half century following Emancipation, despite its clear significance to the history of the United States. But no shortage of monuments exists to Confederate soldiers, the last (as far as I know) erected in Sierra Vista, Arizona, on April 17, 2010. Of particular interest to our meeting was Stone Mountain, a half-hour drive away, and the site of the largest Confederate monument in the world: a bas-relief carved into the mountain depicting Stonewall Jackson, Robert Lee, and Jefferson Davis on horseback. Completed in 1972, more than half a century after work commenced, the monument marks the site of the founding of the modern Ku Klux Klan (1915) and provided a reference for Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963: ‘Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia.'”
Dr. Grossman continues, “That which is memorialized and that which is left to popular memory are not accidental. Choices are made about what gets built, displayed, and given plaques. Memorials are public commemorations that legitimate what comes to be called ‘heritage.’ We intended to explore these choices in our plenary, inspired by the controversies surrounding the Confederate flag that followed in the wake of a more recent act of domestic terrorism: the murder of nine African Americans during a prayer service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, 2015. Our panel focused on the meaning, use, and implications of Confederate memorials, and the debates that have emerged over commemoration through naming. This debate has thrust historians into the center of public culture. Many AHA members are faculty at institutions where students have mounted protests directed at removing the names of individuals tainted by discredited ideas or identified with discredited policies, most often relating to race and racism. Others have engaged the issues as historians should: as experts on ‘what actually happened’ and how public culture has created new or imagined histories through memorialization based on popular narratives, sometimes narratives carefully crafted by economic and political interests for particular purposes. ‘What is the historian’s role in this moment?’ asked panelist Daina Berry: ‘To provide the context in which people can understand the very complex issues of the past and the present.’”
He writes, “How do we do that? Do we rename thousands of highways, buildings, and institutions across the nation? Perhaps. Panelist David Blight suggested that as historians we have the expertise—perhaps even the professional responsibility—to think about the possibility of what he called a ‘line.’ One could draw that line at people who took up arms—indeed, committed treason—to defend the rights of some human beings to own, buy, and sell other human beings. Lee. Stonewall Jackson. Davis. But what about Woodrow Wilson or Lord Jeffrey Amherst? Where does our line fall with regard to innumerable others who are part and parcel of the long and complex history of American racism? We cannot erase these histories simply by taking down the reminders. As Earl Lewis, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, cogently reminds us, ‘We cannot exorcise the past without confronting it fully.’ This is the work of historians. Our colleagues who work in museums, national parks, and other sites of historical memory will have to wrestle with the question posed by panelist and museum curator John Coski: ‘You can’t really erase history. You can erase the presentation of it, you can erase the memory of it, you can erase a particular spin of it, but is it really erasing history?’”
According to Dr. Grossman, “Of course not. What happened, happened. So on college campuses we have a unique opportunity: to teach students how to figure out what happened in the past, and to provide them with an opportunity to keep that past in direct conversation with the present—including the commemorative objects they find problematic, if not downright offensive. We can even be a little bit imaginative, offering opportunities to develop skills and habits that employers tell us our students need, that are collaborative and cross-disciplinary. Undergraduate history students, for instance, could work with design and architecture students to create historical markers—maybe even small monuments—that reside alongside and speak to a named campus building or statue, both historically and aesthetically. The students would be required to do the necessary research, write text, collaborate with colleagues in appropriate disciplines to prepare and submit proposals for construction, and perhaps use digital media to disseminate their work beyond the campus. Students are interested in these issues; let’s harness that engagement to fulfill the educational missions of our colleges and universities. If we cannot erase the past, we can’t erase memories of the past, either—they too are an important part of our history. Everything has a history: slavery itself, the defense of slavery, the myth of the Lost Cause, and the resurrection of that myth for political purposes in response to the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century. As historians, we know that this is the purpose of revisionism. If that term implies invention and untruth for some readers, then it is our job to explain the term and the process better. And as historians, we will need to confront our own part in the evolution of a national memory that produced textbooks complimenting slaveholders for civilizing their chattel and justifying the removal and killing of generations of Native Americans. The AHA’s hands are by no means clean. We still have a Dunning Prize, neatly matching the now discredited (and ‘revised’) ‘Dunning school’ of Reconstruction historiography. Our journal is complicit in the legitimation of histories that have done harm. These histories have been revised, generally discarded from our syllabi and narratives. But they reigned for a half century or more, and still command substantial respect in popular culture. This reconsideration will require humility and persistence both. Our teachers got some things wrong. Their teachers got some things wrong. And yes, we are no doubt getting some things wrong. Without sinking into the morass of whiggery, I hope we’re getting better.”
Next we return to the Old Dominion for this article from Washington and Lee University. “Traveller, the horse which served Confederate General Robert E. Lee, has long been a fixture of campus culture at Washington and Lee University, as the famous steed, known for his courage and stamina, is buried on campus. But Traveller’s Confederate connections recently led university officials to remove two markers erected in his honor, his gravestone as well as a plaque honoring the beloved companion. The decision prompted anger and concern from some alumni and students. Traveller served Lee both during the Civil War and afterwards, when the ex-general became president of the then-Washington College. Lee was president from 1865 until his death in 1871. Traveller died a few months later. The university replaced one marker – Traveller’s gravestone – with a version omitting the original references to Lee and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In a July 16 response to community concerns, university officials said they would also replace the plaque they stripped from a campus building, which had noted Traveller’s last home and was a visible part of the campus environment.”
The university issued this statement. [begin quote]
Washington and Lee University has received a number of questions about the decision to relocate four historical plaques from various common spaces and academic settings on campus to our new museum spaces in the University Chapel. Many of these questions are sincere and arise from honest confusion within our community while others are based on significant misinformation. The following is intended to provide facts and context around this decision.
Key Takeaways:
- Four historical plaques relocated on campus this week are being installed along with other historically significant plaques in a new exhibit, located in University Chapel, titled “The Power of Memory: Remembering Robert E. Lee.”
- The four plaques relocated include one from Payne Hall indicating where Lee took his oath of office as president of Washington College, another from Payne Hall identifying the room that served as Lee’s office from 1865-1868, and two dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to commemorate Lee’s horse Traveller located on the side of the Lee House garage and at Traveller’s gravesite outside the chapel.
- As the Board of Trustees emphasized in its messages to the University community in June 2021 and September 2022, W&L is an educational institution and, as such, its campus is not a museum or an appropriate repository for Confederate artifacts. In keeping with this principle, over a year ago, the Board determined that these plaques should be relocated to educational exhibitions.
- Traveller’s remains, at the location next to University Chapel, are untouched and a new marker to memorialize him has been installed at the same location. The other related plaques and interpretive signage at the site will also be updated.
- The Traveller marker relocated from the Lee House garage will be replaced with a new marker at the same location in the near future that is consistent with other markers across our campus.
Over the past several years, Washington and Lee’s Board of Trustees has engaged in a careful review of the University’s symbols, names, and practices with the understanding that these communicate the University’s values and are an important component of its reputation. This work has involved extensive outreach to students, faculty, staff, alumni and parents as well as independent historians. As outlined in the Board’s June 2021 and September 2022 messages to the University community, the Board’s work has been guided by four key, overarching objectives:
- recognizing George Washington and Robert E. Lee for their important contributions to the institution;
- helping all students, faculty, and staff feel welcome, included, and able to thrive on our campus;
- reaffirming the University’s rejection of Confederate ideology; and
- presenting the University’s entire history fully and honestly.
The Board’s work has resulted in an approach to campus symbols that attempts to balance the University’s rich and complicated history with its educational mission. Washington and Lee University is an educational institution. Its campus is neither a museum nor an appropriate repository for Confederate artifacts, and as such, the Board determined that a number of plaques on campus should be relocated to a museum to be appropriately interpreted. These include certain historic plaques located in current academic, residence and gathering spaces and others placed by third parties such as The United Daughters of the Confederacy or honoring Robert E. Lee’s service as the commander of the Confederate forces.
The relocation of plaques to a new permanent exhibit titled “The Power of Memory: Remembering Robert E. Lee” currently being installed in University Chapel is part of a carefully considered series of steps to create educational exhibits and place Confederate artifacts in those exhibits and in context.
In preparation for this exhibit, two plaques – one indicating where Lee took his oath of office for the presidency of Washington College and a second identifying the room that served as his office from 1865-1868 – were moved from Payne Hall to be included in the new exhibit.
Two other plaques that were dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to commemorate Lee’s horse Traveller – one from the side of the Lee House garage that was formerly a stable, and the other at Traveller’s gravesite outside the chapel – were also relocated to be installed in the exhibit. Traveller’s remains were untouched and a new marker to memorialize him was installed at the same location. The other related plaques and interpretive signage at the site will also be updated. A new replacement marker designating Traveller’s last home in the stable at Lee House is forthcoming.
These actions are important steps in recognizing, preserving, and telling Washington and Lee’s extensive history as one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States. The next and most significant step is construction of the Museum of Institutional History that will feature fixed and rotating museum exhibits, rotating gallery spaces, storage, classrooms, and an auditorium for events.
A working group comprised of trustees, administrators, faculty and alumni was formed last fall and, with the assistance of a renowned national architectural firm and museum consultant, has begun to develop a plan and process for the construction of the museum. The Museum of Institutional History, along with other museums on campus, will be dedicated to telling Washington and Lee’s 275 years of history, including the significant contributions both Washington and Lee made to our University. We expect to provide further details about this exciting project, as well as other new exhibits, in the coming months. [end quote]
Next we have this article from Mississippi by Alexander Taylor, a Ph.D. candidate in economics from George Mason University. “Confederate monuments burst into public consciousness in 2015 when a shooting at a historically Black church in Charleston, S.C., instigated the first broad calls for their removal. The shooter intended to start a race war and had posed with Confederate imagery in photos posted online. Monument removal efforts grew in 2017 after a counter-protester was killed at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacist groups defended the preservation of Confederate monuments. Removal movements saw widespread success in 2020 following George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police. These events linked Confederate monuments to modern racist beliefs and acts. But whether monuments carry inherent racism or are merely misinterpreted requires further exploration. Economist Jhacova A. Williams’ research shows that Black Americans who live in areas that have a relatively higher number of streets named after prominent Confederate generals ‘are less likely to be employed, are more likely to be employed in low-status occupations, and have lower wages compared to Whites.’ I study economic and political history and have researched the effects of Confederate monuments in the post-Civil War South. I found that these symbols helped solidify the Jim Crow era, which established segregation across the South and lasted from the 1880s until the 1960s. Increases in the vote share of the Democratic Party accompanied these symbols—the racist party that had supported slavery and, after the Civil War, supported segregation for another century. Reductions in voter turnout also accompanied the building of these monuments. Further research I conducted shows that these political effects disproportionately occurred in areas with a larger share of Black residents. In other words, as these monuments were erected, the vote increased for members of the then-racist Democratic Party, and people turned out to vote in lower numbers in predominantly Black areas. These findings demonstrate that a connection existed between racism and these monuments from their inception—and provide context for modern monument debates.”
He continues, “The South saw almost no monument dedications during the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. Monuments first appeared during the Reconstruction era—1865 to 1877—when the North occupied the Southern states and integrated them back into the Union. Reconstruction-era monuments in general did not glorify the Confederacy. These monuments largely honored the dead and were placed in cemeteries and spaces distant from daily life. They compartmentalized the trauma of the war, commemorating lives but not placing the Confederacy at the center of Southern identity. As Reconstruction neared its end in 1875, a Stonewall Jackson monument erected in Richmond, Va., foreshadowed the different monuments to come. The monument’s dedication drew 50,000 spectators and included a military-style parade. The potential presence of a local all-Black militia proved to be controversial. To avoid accusations of race mixing, organizers planned to place the militia and any other Black participants in the back of the parade. The militia did not attend, likely in anticipation of the controversy, and the only Black Southerners present in the parade were formerly enslaved people who had served in the Confederacy’s Stonewall Brigade. This stark picture of Southern race relations served as a preview of political developments to come. This trend continued after Reconstruction, which ended with the Compromise of 1877. This compromise settled the disputed 1876 presidential election, giving Republicans the presidency and Democrats, then a pro-segregation party, full political control of the South. Democrats subsequently established what would become known as Jim Crow laws across the South, an array of restrictive and discriminatory laws that disenfranchised Black Southerners and made them second-class citizens. Monuments played a cultural role in establishing the Jim Crow South. Unlike Reconstruction monuments, post-Reconstruction monuments were erected in prominent public spaces, and their focus shifted toward the portrayal and glorification of famous Confederates. Monument dedication ceremonies were particularly popular around the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, peaking in 1911. Additional Confederate monuments have been dedicated since that period, but those numbers pale in comparison to the monument-building spree of 1878 to 1912.”
We also read, “My research investigates the political effects of Confederate monuments in the Reconstruction and early post-Reconstruction—1877-1912—eras, namely their effects on Democratic Party vote share and voter turnout. I expected monuments’ potential effects to be directly related to their centrality to everyday life and glorification of the Confederacy. This is the primary difference between soldier-memorializing Reconstruction and Confederate-glorifying post-Reconstruction monuments. I expected to find little political effect from soldier-memorializing Reconstruction monuments, but some pro-Jim Crow effects from Confederate-glorifying post-Reconstruction monuments. As monuments moved from cemeteries into central public spaces such as parks and squares, I expected them to affect voters’ decisions. That is precisely what I found. During Reconstruction, counties that dedicated Confederate monuments saw no change in voter turnout or Democratic Party vote share in biennial congressional elections. These symbols were soldier-memorializing and physically separate from public life and did not influence voter decision-making. However, when monuments began to glorify the Confederacy and shifted into public life, political effects emerged. Counties that dedicated monuments in the early post-Reconstruction period saw, on average, a 5.5 percentage point increase in Democratic Party vote share and a 2.2 percentage point decrease in voter turnout compared with other counties. As monuments changed, so did their effect on the public. Glorifying public monuments communicated to the public that the Confederacy was worth preserving, thus strengthening Democratic majorities and lowering participation in the political process.”
He goes on to conclude, “Larger Democratic majorities alongside lower voter turnout already suggests Black Southerners, who almost exclusively voted for Republicans at that time, were voting less in areas with monuments. I conducted further exploration and found that these political effects disproportionately occurred in counties with larger Black populations. This suggests that Black voters were more responsive to Confederate monuments, which signaled that the local community did not accept them, further suppressing their political activity. The effects of post-Reconstruction monuments suggest that they played a role in continued racism throughout the South into the early 20th century. Confederate monuments’ controversy today demonstrates the values still conveyed by their presence in society. Recent research has demonstrated the long-run effects of the spread of Southern white culture and prejudices across the United States post-Civil War, connecting it to higher levels of modern-day Republican Party voting and conservative values. It is thus no wonder Confederate monuments, as prominent symbols of pro-Confederate, Southern white culture, continue to be—and are likely to remain—cultural flashpoints.”
Next we have this article from Texas. “Thomas Claiborne Frost fought Native Americans as a Texas Ranger. He signed the Articles of Secession in 1861 to break from the Union. He served as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederacy. He supported white Texans’ right to enslave Black people, but at the same time, he didn’t own any himself, and he risked his life lending money to Black customers in the post-war South, according to Ernest Qadimasil, the grandson of one of those Black residents. Now his name will adorn the newly rebranded Spurs arena: Frost Bank Center. After the Civil War, having refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Union, Frost quit his law practice and helped open a modest merchandising business near San Fernando Cathedral that would blossom into one of the largest banks in the Lone Star State. Frost Bank’s founder led the company for 35 years until he died of a stroke in 1903. Near the end, the man who helped give rise to the Confederacy in Texas forged an unlikely friendship with Henry Porter Field ‘P.F.’ Roberts, a formerly enslaved man from the Mississippi Delta who became a teacher and then one of San Antonio’s first Black business owners. Frost loaned Roberts, a regular hunting partner, money to open a small grocery store and bought him a house at a time when Black people couldn’t own property in San Antonio and Bexar County, Roberts’ grandson said.”
The article continues, “Qadimasil, a lawyer and historian, described Frost as a ‘humanitarian who honored the politics of his day.’ Bill Day, a spokesman for Frost Bank, said T.C. Frost ‘acted with grace and probity, and the company that bears the Frost name has adopted integrity, caring and excellence as its core values.’ Day was quick to point out that the company’s founder didn’t own enslaved persons and, according to family lore, ‘only signed the articles of secession because it had been passed by a democratic vote, and that later he didn’t sign the oath to the Union because he didn’t feel he had done anything illegal.’ Born Dec. 31, 1833, in Alabama, Frost came to Texas in 1854 to teach Latin at Austin College in Huntsville. At 21, Frost studied law under Sam Houston. Frost clerked in Houston’s law office before being admitted to the bar. On the advice of Houston, he moved to Comanche County, where he worked as a land surveyor and was appointed to the Texas Rangers. Frost became captain of a company that protected settlers and a Comanche County ‘border infested with Indians and other marauders,’ Frost’s obituary in the San Antonio Express noted. Frost set up a law practice and was elected district attorney of Comanche County in 1860. The following year, he was elected as a delegate of the secession convention, which met in Austin and voted to sever the bonds between Texas and the United States. At 28, Frost was among the younger men to sign his name to a document declaring the preservation of slavery as the main cause for secession. That 1,600-word declaration, which mentions slavery 23 times, said in part ‘that the African race had no agency in establishment’ of the United States and the Confederacy and that Black people “were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race.’”
The article goes on to say, “Most of the Texas delegates to vote to secede from the Union weren’t enslavers, according to the book ‘Secession and the Union in Texas’ by historian Walter L. Buenger. They were lawyers. The Texas Handbook Online also points out that there wasn’t a major plantation in Comanche, and just 25 of the 709 people living in the county owned enslaved people in the year before Texas seceded. The county’s population of 709 included 61 who were enslaved. Qadimasil believes Frost’s decision to join the Confederacy wasn’t by choice. ‘He was forced to be a part of the Confederacy because he was a Southerner by birth,’ said Qadimasil, who has researched the Frost and Roberts family lineages. He has been working with researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio to get two of his grandfather’s store locations declared Texas historical landmarks. ‘It was not unusual that he would support a platform of state’s rights.’ While voters overwhelmingly decided in February 1861 to secede from the Union, many opposed the effort, including Germans in the Hill Country and Frost’s mentor, Sam Houston. Houston was forced out of the governor’s office for his role in opposing secession. Many families against slavery and secession were forced to leave Texas, and it cost others their lives. When Texas seceded from the Union, secessionists acted on a plan to rid the state of U.S. troops. That left the settlers of Comanche County and others without protection from Comanche raids. The Confederacy’s Texas Mounted Rifles, a group later renamed the First Texas Cavalry, was formed for defense and to slow down the penetration of the western frontier by Native American tribes through patrols and small-scale engagements. It was the Confederacy’s first regiment. Frontiersman and Texas Ranger Henry McCulloch was appointed colonel of the Texas Mounted Rifles and charged with gathering a volunteer regiment that would force the surrender of all federal posts along the Texas frontier. He sent letters to several captains — including Frost, then a Confederate volunteer—authorizing them to raise companies. McCulloch established his headquarters in San Antonio, where he was elected colonel, and Frost was picked as his lieutenant colonel.”
According to the article, “Frost served at Fort Chadbourne and Fort Mason in West Texas. He fought in skirmishes with Comanche raiding parties. One example of Frost’s career in the Confederacy can be found in David Paul Smith’s 1987 doctoral dissertation at North Texas State University, now known as the University of North Texas. In early August 1861, Native Americans attacked Frost and his detachment, Smith wrote. Two Native Americans and a Confederate captain and private died in the skirmish. Frost’s detachment pursued its attackers but was later outnumbered and returned to camp. McCulloch said of the episode, ‘This cannot be regarded as one of those brilliant achievements which so often mark the conflicts between our rangers and the Indians.’ Tom Walker’s ‘Banking on Tradition: The 130-year History of the Frost National Bank’ tells another tale. Walker described Frost as ‘an heroic figure, gifted with protean talents and prodigious drive.’ He also had ‘uncanny business acumen and common horse sense.’ After his one-year enlistment in the Texas Mounted Riflemen ended in 1862, Frost was attached to the 30th Regiment Texas Cavalry, which defended the Gulf Coast. Frost never participated in battles against Union troops, and in 1864 he was declared medically unfit for service due to tuberculosis; he was discharged from military service, according to Day, the bank’s spokesman. After the Civil War, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Union, so he could no longer practice law in the U.S., according to the Handbook of Texas. ‘Intellectually and morally convinced the South’s cause had been a just one, Frost was a magnificent rebel,’ the San Antonio Light wrote in 1954 of that decision.”
We also learn, “A year after the end of the Civil War, Frost pulled into San Antonio to start a horse-and-wagon freight operation at a time when the Alamo City was staggering beneath a post-war depression. Shortly after starting the freight business, he sold it and joined his brother John Morrison Frost’s failing mercantile and auctioneer shop. Before long, Frost’s banking facility outgrew the general store, and by 1877, he hired his first teller. That teller, Ned McIlhenny, recalled Frost as ‘a man so frugal he would chide employees who used deposit slips as scratch pads, yet so generous he would occasionally send employees on extended vacations for their health,’ according to a 1954 San Antonio Light story. ‘He always addressed his employees as ‘mister.’’ Frost also loaned money to Black customers and was an unlikely benefactor to Roberts, who opened one of the first and only Black-owned grocery stores in San Antonio in the early 1900s, his grandson said. By giving the loan, about 30 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Frost went against the grain. He risked his business, livelihood, standing in the community and life, Qadimasil said.”
The article concludes, “Qadimasil said Frost and Roberts had a lot in common: They were Christian men of principle and stature with families. ‘It’s not improbable that two men of like minds, morals and character would find a common ground in one another,’ Qadimasil said. Frost died in 1903 at 69 as one of San Antonio’s wealthiest men. His oldest son — T.C. Frost Jr., then 24 — took the reins as president, and that son’s little brothers — Joseph Hardin and John — also worked for the bank. Pat Frost, the great-great-grandson of T.C. Frost, will retire by the end of the year.“
Next is this article from New Orleans. “As Canal Street commuters have probably noticed, something’s going on at the site of the former monument to Jefferson Davis on the Norman C. Francis Parkway neutral ground. An avalanche of startlingly scarlet, plastic foam blocks are piled on the steps of the stone platform where a statue of the president of the Confederacy once stood. The eye-catching, unfinished conceptual sculpture, which is surrounded by a translucent fence, is part of a future multi-part public artwork titled ‘Abolitionist Playground’ by kai lumumba barrow. The artist does not capitalize their name. The statue of Davis was declared a public nuisance, craned away, and placed in storage indefinitely in 2017. The parkway where the statue stood was formerly named for the Confederate president, but was renamed in 2021 in honor of Dr. Norman C. Francis, former president of Xavier University. The plinth that once supported the Confederate monument has been used repeatedly by artists as a historically resonant context for alternative public art. Notably, in 2021 Demond Melancon, Big Chief of the Young Seminole Hunter Black Masking Indian tribe, displayed a beaded and feathered suit at the site. Later that year, Rontherin Ratliff and the Level Artists Collective produced a towering sculpture of an African drum being held aloft by human figures, which was installed where Davis once stood.”
The article also says, “According to information found via QR code on signs near the sculpture, barrow’s artwork is meant to call attention ‘to sites of carceral control while engaging counter-narratives of play and creative imagination.’ The finished project ‘will consist of a series of sculptural installations that give physical form to the institutional ramifications of racism and modes of survival and resistance.’ The jarringly colored installation at Canal Street is related to the clusters of salvaged doorways, fences and shutters a few blocks farther downtown on the parkway that appeared earlier in the summer, also by kai lumumba barrow. Barrow’s work is one of three public installations being sponsored by Prospect NOLA, New Orleans’ international art festival. Prospect will provide each of the projects with between $40,000 and $50,000. A Prospect exhibit in 2021-22 included the installation of a water goddess sculpture by a Black female artist at the site of the former monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which became a public sensation. Based on the materials used to produce the ‘Abolitionist Playground’ artworks so far, the installation will probably not be permanent. The Prospect management has declined to be interviewed or to comment in detail on the ongoing installations.”
Our next article is this one from Pensacola, Florida. “A hearing in the Pensacola Confederate monument case later this month is poised to decide if Pensacola will be ordered to put its Confederate monument back up immediately, even before the lawsuit over its removal is decided. The group suing Pensacola over the removal of its Confederate monument filed an updated motion on Monday asking an Escambia County Circuit Court judge to order the city to restore the monument immediately for allegedly violating a 2020 temporary restraining order. Save Southern Heritage Inc. Florida Chapter, Ladies Memorial Association, the Stephen Mallory Camp 1315 Sons of Confederate Veterans and others sued Pensacola and the state of Florida in state court the same day the Pensacola City Council voted to remove the monument in July 2020 and rename the park where it stood to Florida Square. Three days after the lawsuit was filed, a judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the city from blocking or removing the monument from public view until the lawsuit was resolved. The city covered the monument with a blue tarp, and Save Southern Heritage filed a motion seeking to hold the city in contempt for violating the restraining order. However, before the contempt motion could be heard, the case was transferred to federal court. A federal judge ruled the restraining order wasn’t valid and found the city had the First Amendment right to remove the monument. With the court order in hand, the city moved forward with removing the monument in October 2020. Save Southern Heritage appealed the decision and in May 2022 the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal judge was wrong to take jurisdiction of the case. The appeals ruling essentially restored the case back to its July 2020 status in state court, and Save Southern Heritage argues the original restraining order is back in effect.”
The article concludes, “The group is seeking to hold the city in contempt for violating the order, and as a penalty for violating the order, it wants the city to immediately restore the monument. ‘The monetary cost of restoration of the monument shall be a penalty for the improper acts and removal prior to the resolution of the case for which the Defendants (Pensacola) bore all the risk,’ David McCallister, attorney for Save Southern Heritage, wrote in the Monday court filing.”
Student of the American Civil War 