At ten this morning the final meeting of Baltimore’s committee to review the four confederate monuments met for the final session before making their recommendations. There was no room for any more public input. But I came anyway just to make sure of what was going to happen, and to see what any actions needed to be taken.
The debate over confederate monuments has and still is being taken all over the state. The little town of Taneytown, as in whose name the whole town was named after, met and decided to remove their statue from in front of their courthouse completely. When a town named after you doesn’t like you anymore, it’s a sign of change. In Frederick Maryland there’s another statue of Taney in front of their town hall. After much wrangling that town put up a brand new statue of Frederick Douglas also at the town hall...in the rear. Yes, that should about even things up.
What still has me baffled is the fears of some of the committee that removing these monuments would somehow cause us all to suddenly suffer a total amnesia about the Civil War, that we will forget all about it, and that without those “teachable art objects” we will repeat the mistakes that led up to it. No actually, we are repeating the same mistakes despite having those teachable objects around for all these decades. I do not know of any monument to Benedict Arnold anywhere in the country, but we don’t appear to have forgotten him at all. So monument presence doesn’t mean we remember history.
A couple of times the item was brought up that a woman sculpted the Lee/Jackson monument. And she won a contest to do it! Isn’t that all the more reason to keep that monument? I’d like to know if this woman was hired by the private individual to sculpt this piece in 1948 because the patron could get away with paying her half, or even a third of what he would have paid if a man were hired to do it. So this monument could be a tribute to sexism as well as racism.
It is one of the crying shame and sadnesses in this country that the cause for women’s rights and black rights are still treated as two totally separated movements with the result is that BOTH are still woefully incomplete. When will we stop this divide and conquer?
Also it seemed nobody could come up with her name.
Three of the members of the committee spoke out with what I thought were outstanding points. Experienced attorney Larry Gibson pointed out that while out city has THREE monuments to Confederate soldiers we have only ONE each for World War One and Two, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Proportionwise, isn’t that a bit lopsided? Elizabeth Nix pointed out that the Civil War was truly about expanding slavery, and not states rights. Also while 25,000 Marylanders fought for the confederacy, 60,000 fought for the Union, an almost three to one ratio, which is the opposite of the ratio of southern to northern monuments. Donna Cypress brought up that these monuments were created during the 1910s and 1920s as part of a fashionably romantic view of the South as a “lost cause”, and these monuments reflect the nostalgia for those “simpler” times.
What’s the definition of nostalgia? It’s a fond memory of a golden past that never actually existed. In other words, these statues represent fictional characters. At best they are historic fictional characters. But fiction they are, and until they are removed it gives the impression our city does not want to face the truth.
Larry Gibson also emphasized that the Lee/Jackson piece wasn’t constructed until 1948 by a wealthy individual honoring two generals who never got to set foot here in the first place! How’s that for fiction?
In the end, the recommendations going to the mayor are these: That the two monuments of Roger Taney and the Jackson/Lee monument be removed. That the Jackson/Lee statue should be offered to the US Park Service with a suggestion that they go to the historic battlefield at Chancellorsville, a place they did take part, where Stonewall Jackson was killed (by his own sentry) , and could be one way a woman’s work could grace a battlefield. The Taney statue, which is only a copy of the original now in Annapolis, to be removed to place to be decided.
Or maybe we could melt it down and recycle the raw material for its replacement?…
The confederate women’s and confederate soldiers and sailors monuments, which deal with unnamed groups and not individuals, to remain where they are. However, its recommended that additional pieces be added to them to place them in a truer context. I will keep track developments and see what they will plan first before any other move is contemplated.
I will continue to keep track on all of it and do my best to make sure that the first two pieces will definitely be removed. Then perhaps, a young black girl who still has to face the two southern generals every day out her front door can smile in relief for the day her eyes are set free.
I do this in inspiration and admiration for her.