monuments

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• 8/2/2020
  

  From Historical Injustice to Contemporary Police Brutality, and Costs of Monuments to the Unworthy

  by Billy J. Stratton

  Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer, two Civil War-era heroes who rebelled and refused to join a brutal attack against Native peoples represent the moral courage we would do well to honor.

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• SOURCE: ProPublica
  7/31/2020
  

  4 Perspectives on the Christopher Columbus Statues

  Several stakeholders are interviewed about Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's decision to temporarily remove two statues of Christopher Columbus from public space.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/25/2020
  

  As Confederate Monuments Tumble, Die-Hards Are Erecting Replacements

  Groups such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy are organizing the pushback.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/25/2020
  

  Across Virginia, Local Officials Weigh Taking Down Reminders Of Confederate Legacy

  Virginia has more Confederate statues than any other state, according to Julie V. Langan, director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/24/2020
  

  Confederate Memorials Quietly Removed from Virginia Capitol Overnight

  “Virginia has a story to tell that extends far beyond glorifying the Confederacy and its participants,” House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn said in an emailed statement, condemning the Confederate ideology as based on maintaining slavery.

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• 7/26/2020
  

  Let Us Now Remove Famous Men

  by Calvin Schermerhorn

  Should the statues remain up, doing the quiet work of reinforcing white supremacy while we get to work dismantling the interlocking components of structural racism? Or are the statues part of a 400-year history of violence against African-descended people that needs urgent attention and rectification?

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  7/22/2020
  

  House Votes to Remove Confederate Statues From U.S. Capitol

  The bipartisan vote to banish the statues from display was the latest step in a nationwide push to remove historical symbols of racism and oppression from public places.

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• SOURCE: Politico
  7/19/2020
  

  Replace the Alexander Hamilton Stephens Statue With One of John Lewis

  by Isaac J. Bailey

  Stephens's "Cornerstone" speech declared the Confederacy's dedication to slavery and white supremacy. His statue in the U.S. Capitol should be replaced with a statue of a champion of democracy.

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• SOURCE: ABC News
  7/18/2020
  

  Historians Debate America's History of Racism and Confederate Monuments

  Experts interviewed by ABC News say erasing the past isn't the answer to calls for justice, police reform and an end to structural racism.

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• SOURCE: Journal of the Civil War Era
  7/20/2020
  

  Fear of a Black Planet (Part 1)

  by Scott Hancock

  With their AR-15s and assorted other guns, a few dozen people, “living in fear of my shade” plus truth and history, met us with anger and threats, unlike any other year the Confederacy has come back to Gettysburg. Fellow historians of every shade, we must respond.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/17/2020
  

  Reimagining America’s Memorial Landscape

  by David W. Blight

  As we are witnessing, the problem of the 21st century in this country is some agonizingly enduring combination of legacies bleeding forward from conquest, slavery and color lines. Freedom in its infinite meanings remains humanity’s most universal aspiration. How America reimagines its memorial landscape may matter to the whole world.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/14/2020
  

  Black Conservatives Rebuke Call To Remove D.C.’S Emancipation Memorial

  Supporters of the monument, including dozens of conservative black thought leaders, pastors and politicians who came to the nation’s capital to defend the embattled statue, say its critics are misreading the statue and ignoring its history.

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• SOURCE: CBS News
  7/12/2020
  

  The History and Future of Confederate Monuments

  As debate over the takedown of Confederate monuments continues, historian Julian Hayter examines why and when the statues went up in the first place.

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• SOURCE: FiveThirtyEight
  7/8/2020
  

  Confederate Statues Were Never Really About Preserving History

  These monuments were installed as symbols of white supremacy during periods of U.S. history when Black Americans’ civil rights were aggressively under attack.

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• SOURCE: The Progressive
  7/7/2020
  

  The Story Behind the Lee Statue in Richmond, Virginia

  by Peter Rachleff

  Now the time has come for the story of the Workingmen’s Reform Party, the building of Richmond’s City Hall, and the solidarity-based politics of the Black and white members of the Knights of Labor, to come out into the light.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/6/2020
  

  Frederick Douglass Statue Torn Down in Rochester, N.Y., on Anniversary of His Famous Fourth of July Speech

  In 1852, Douglass asked the city’s residents and the country: ‘What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?’

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/4/2020
  

  Historians Question Trump’s Choice of ‘Heroes’ for National Garden Monument

  “It’s like they threw a bunch of stuff on the wall and just went with whatever stuck,” says history professor Karen Cox.

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  7/4/2020
  

  Trump Says He Will Create a Statuary Park Honoring ‘American Heroes’

  Historians Kevin K. Gaines and Julian E. Zelizer discuss the president's power to shape historical narratives.

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• SOURCE: USA Today
  7/6/2020
  

  As Divisions Threaten America, The Pressure To Cancel Presidents Is Dangerous

  Any hint of admiration for Lee means automatic cancellation these days but in the mid-20th century, it was ordinary and accepted.   

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• SOURCE: New York Daily News
  7/3/2020
  

  How to Remember the Founders

  by Eli Merritt

  The Fourth of July is not a day to celebrate the Founders themselves, nor white independence, but the bracing principles and “inalienable rights” they fought for: freedom, equality and justice.