We begin this week’s look at the nationwide retreat of confederate heritage with this third edition off the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report, “Whose Heritage?” One thing we learn here is, “Although there are 723 live monuments in SPLC’s database as of January 20, 2022, there are more roadways (741) honoring Confederates than there are monuments. Together with schools (201), counties and municipalities (104), parks (38), buildings (51), holidays (22), military bases (10), commemorative license plates (7), bodies of water (6), and bridges (6), these places do important cultural work to reinforce white supremacy.” We also find, “Most Confederate monuments were erected in the period following Reconstruction and during Jim Crow. After World War II, the Confederate battle flag took on new meaning as a symbol of white supremacy, when ‘Dixiecrats‘ used it to oppose Civil Rights. Schools were largely named after Confederates in the period following the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board, which ended racial segregation in public schools. In each instance, though the specific type of memorial changed, the intent — to terrorize Black Americans — remained the same.”
The report also tells us, “As historian Modupe Labode notes, ‘Although some people may regard the vehement arguments over these symbols and the calls for removal of monuments as a new part of twenty-first-century life, protests over the display of Confederate monuments and emblems go back decades.’ Thus, calls on communities to remove symbols of hate is not an imposition of our contemporary values on the people of the past or an attempt to erase history. Rather, it holds communities accountable to Kingston, Grant, Fields, and other Black Americans whose protests go back decades and who clearly understood that Confederate memorials falsely valorize a government that fought to preserve the right to enslave Black people. Protests over Confederate monuments have garnered much popular and scholarly attention, and this report is attentive to how Black Americans have protested both monuments and memorials. Here and elsewhere, SPLC distinguishes between monuments and memorials, following historian Seth Bruggeman who explains, ‘Monument,’ […] usually refers to a commemorative structure or edifice, whereas ‘memorial’ applies to almost anything—including buildings, books, roads, stadiums—that recalls the dead or the experience of profound loss. The Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C., is […] a monument, because the structure itself functions as a well of national regard for Lincoln’s sacrifice and vision. Across town, however, only sports fans likely consider the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium a monument. Its tribute to Kennedy’s memory is in name alone.” Bruggeman notes that these categories are fluid, but they offer useful guidelines for differentiating between monuments like obelisks, statues, plinths, and pedestals and other memorials including schools, roadways, buildings, flags, military bases, parks, bodies of water, bridges, roadways, and even sports teams.”
You can download a .pdf of the report here.
We next look at this article from Asheville, North Carolina. “The City of Asheville can finalize its removal of the Vance Monument. After a lengthy legal battle, the NC Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the group challenging the removal of the Confederate Monument in downtown Asheville did not prove their breach of contract claim against the city. ‘This has been a long time coming. We’re just very pleased in that the position we’ve always taken from the outset has been vindicated by the Court’s decision today,’ City Attorney Brad Branham told BPR. ‘So the most important thing is it allows us to effectuate what city council always wanted which is to move forward with a new vision for Pack Square.’ The decision was authored by Phil Berger Jr. It follows two years of legal battles that transpired while the final sliver of the monument — the base — remained in the heart of downtown Asheville, its fate in legal limbo. For many community members, the obelisk – and the legacy of Zebulon Vance – represented an enduring symbol of racism. Vance, a Confederate officer and later a North Carolina governor and state senator, enslaved people prior to the Civil War and fought against civil rights for Black Americans in the 19th century.”
The article continues, “The challengers, the Society for the Historical Preservation of the 26th North Carolina Troops, raised about $140,000 to purchase and restore the monument in 2015. Under the terms of the contract, the group would then donate the obelisk back to the city. The 26th Regiment took legal action to keep the Vance Monument in response to the City of Asheville’s decision to take down the 75-foot granite obelisk in March 2021. The demolition followed the recommendation of a joint Vance Monument Task Force involving the City of Asheville and Buncombe County. In April 2022, the state Court of Appeals unanimously decided that the group did not have standing to make a claim about the monument. The Supreme Court this week reversed the Court of Appeals on the issue of standing, but said the plaintiffs nevertheless failed because they ‘abandoned the merits of its breach of contract claim.’ 26th Regiment legal counsel, Edward Phillips, declined to comment on the case. For more than two years, the granite block pieces of the Vance Monument have remained disassembled at an undisclosed location, with only its base remaining at downtown Asheville’s Pack Square. With this court decision, the city can move ahead with the removal of the base. ‘Our plan is to pick up where we left off and complete the original removal efforts,’ Branham said. ‘That doesn’t happen immediately overnight. Obviously, there’s mobilization that has to be done… but our plan is to pick that up as soon as it’s practical.'”
Finally, we have this article from Raleigh, North Carolina. “A North Carolina appeals court ruled Tuesday that local leaders who refused calls to remove a Confederate monument from outside a county courthouse acted in a constitutional manner and kept in place the statue at its longtime location in accordance with state law. The three-judge panel unanimously upheld a trial court judge’s decision to side with Alamance County and its commissioners over the 30 foot (9.1 meter)-tall statue, which features a Confederate infantryman perched at the top. The state NAACP, the Alamance NAACP chapter, and other groups and individuals had sued the county and its leaders in 2021 after the commissioners rejected calls to take the statue down. … North Carolina legislators enacted a law in 2015 that limits when an ‘object of remembrance’ such as a military monument can be relocated. The lawsuit’s plaintiffs said the county and the commissioners violated the state constitution by exercising discriminatory intent to protect a symbol of white supremacy outside the historic Alamance County Courthouse, thus creating the appearance of racial prejudice there.”
The article goes on to say, “In the opinion, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Chris Dillon wrote that the county commissioners lacked authority under the 2015 law to remove the statue. He also said the county manager’s email to commissioners in June 2020, in which he asked them to consider removing the monument out of concern for protesters’ safety, did not qualify for an exception to that law. ‘At all times, the Monument Protection Law required the County to leave the Monument in its current place,’ Dillon wrote. He added that a provision in the state constitution intended to ensure state courts are open to the public doesn’t prohibit the placement of objects of historical remembrance in and around a courthouse. The courthouse monument was dedicated in 1914. ‘Indeed, in many courthouses and other government buildings across our State and nation, there are depictions of historical individuals who held certain views in their time many today would find offensive,’ Dillon wrote. Judges Donna Stroud and Valerie Zachary joined in the opinion. Even with the 2015 law, Confederate monuments in North Carolina have been taken down in recent years, sometimes through force. In 2018, protesters tore down a Confederate statue known as ‘Silent Sam‘ at the University of North Carolina campus at Chapel Hill. Statues of soldiers from the North Carolina Confederate Monument on the old Capitol grounds in Raleigh came down in June 2020. Gov. Roy Cooper, citing public safety, directed that the remainder of the monument and two others on Capitol grounds be removed.”
Student of the American Civil War 