In response to cultural shifts in American society, the State of Georgia decided to update the state’s contributions to National Statuary Hall – deciding to replace the statue of Alexander Hamilton Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, with a statue of the late civil rights leader John Lewis who passed away a few weeks ago on July 17th.
But the state still recognizes and celebrates three men of dishonorable character with the world’s largest memorial to the Confederacy of the United States – the Stone Mountain Park, a park owned by the State of Georgia.
Despite the June 26, 2020 signing of the Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence, statues across the U.S. continue to fall.
Three weeks ago, Congress passed a bill introduced by House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer to remove Confederate, racist statues and busts from the Capitol building. Like Georgia, the State of Maryland decided to remove its statue of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney who stated that “Black people were not U.S. citizens” when he penned the majority opinion on the Dred Scott case before the SCOTUS. Taney’s bust will be replaced by Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice.
A little more than a week ago, Chicago removed the third and final Columbus statue which had held presence in the city for nearly 130 years. And just this week, despite a temporary stay in the dismantling of the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Governor Ralph Northam tweeted, “Make no mistake, the Lee monument will come down and Virginia will be better for it.”
“It’s time,” Hoyer said, “to sweep away the last vestiges of Jim Crow and the dehumanizing of individuals because of the color of their skin that intruded for too long on the sacred spaces of our democracy.”
Stone Mountain Celebrates KKK History, Not U.S. History
In an article titled Confederate Statues Were Never Really About Preserving History, Ryan Best pointed out that many of the Confederate statues and memorials were “meant to promote white supremacy and intimidate Black people.” Most of the statues were erected during the Jim Crow era of the United States. Most were sponsored by organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy with a regressive agenda. And most were erected in prominent locations to remind blacks of the legacy of slavery – to further corner a race of people.
As a nation whose strength lies in our continuous improvements and refinement of the meaning and manifestation of liberty and justice, we shouldn’t leave this matter until it is done.
Our history is not under siege with the demise of Confederate statues. Our history is not being burned to ash with the renaming of our military bases. No. What we’re seeing and hearing from our fellow citizens is a wide-eyed reassessment of the symbols of our nation.
Americans are now seeing the misalignment between our national ideals and principles with the men some chose to cast in bronze or chisel from marble. It is a specious argument to marginalize protests by equating them solely with radical anarchist positions or box them as enraged mobs hellbent on destroying our history. They aren’t. They’re making history.
What Would Michelangelo Think of Stone Mountain?
Michelangelo believed that the sculpture is already complete within the block of marble. That his only job was to chisel away at the excess stone to reveal the beauty inside; an artist moved by numinous hands to reveal the story within.
So, what grim spirit guided the iron and mallet, the dynamite and jackhammers, that released the President of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, and his fellow traitors “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee at Stone Mountain in Georgia? Were they waiting in silence for millions of years for a sculptor to liberate them and celebrate what they fought for?
The craftsmanship of the Stone Mountain carving is beautiful. The detail and the massive scale at 90 feet tall and nearly 200 feet wide are marvels of both engineering and design, but the bas relief is a testament to continued philosophical and political disunity and worse, a renewal of fringe beliefs and an ideological obstinacy that runs counter to the founding principles of the United States of America – that all are created equal.
Gerald Griggs, vice president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP civil rights group, stated bluntly, “Here we are in Atlanta, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, and still we have the largest Confederate monument in the world. It’s time for our state to get on the right side of history.
A Blight on Georgia and a Blight on the United States of America
When people say that the Stone Mountain sculpture or any sculpture or cast bronze is a reminder of our history, we should all question whose history do they really mean.
The original sculptor and fundraiser, Gutzon Borglum, has long been associated with the KKK and ideas of white supremacy. That’s why we’ve heard and seen protesters decrying Mount Rushmore as an edifice to racism. They are referencing the artist behind both it and Stone Mountain among other issues.
The original purpose behind the carving was to celebrate the “Lost Cause” and was driven by another racist, Helen Plane, charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who wrote Borglum with suggestions that Stone Mountain should be the site of his sculpture due to the “Klan which saved us from Negro dominations and carpetbag rule.” Stone Mountain was the site of many cross burnings and featured in the 1915 film, “The Birth of a Nation.”
The Stone Mountain carving features the three most prominent leaders of the rebellion and faces north toward the original enemy of the Confederacy – the Union of the United States of America.
And the timing of the formal consecration of the park makes absolutely clear the intent never had anything to do with preserving our national heritage. The park was dedicated in the midst of the Civil Rights movement on April 14th, 1965 – the 100th anniversary to the day of Lincoln’s assassination.
So, despite the declarations of our current President and his history-challenged cabinet and staff, monuments of the Confederacy and its leaders aren’t about history. They are about ideological recidivism. They are about fear and intimidation.
Stacy Abrams, Democratic candidate for Georgia’s governor, said on Twitter days after the Charlottesville violence in 2017, “We must never celebrate those who defended slavery and tried to destroy the Union… the visible image of Stone Mountain’s edifice remains a blight on our state and should be removed.”
Statues and Monuments are Symbols of What We Value
Those who don’t know history are “doomed to repeat it” so the saying goes. It’s what parents and teachers say to explain why learning about the past is so important. But it’s an indirect castigation and its devoid of optimism.
Winston Churchill offered a more buoyant perspective when he said that while the “future is unknowable, the past should give us hope.”
Our history as a nation of individuals bound together in hope for a better tomorrow is what we need right now. That’s how we should view the disassembly of Richmond Virginia’s Monument Avenue or the de-consecration of countless Columbuses. Because in re-evaluating the artifacts of our past, we have an opportunity to change our future … for the betterment of all.
History is vital and although the pursuit of history degrees in higher education is falling, there’s reason for our society to appreciate the importance of applied history – using our understanding of the historical record to inform current and future challenges. We have a lot to learn from the mistakes and successes of the past. We have an opportunity to choose what stories and symbols of ethics, morality, and altruism make us whole and ground us in a new social contract.
History isn’t dates and battles and it’s not statues; it’s understanding of contexts that underwrote decisions of consequence whether wrong or right. And for that reason, no one should shed a tear over changing names of military bases or sport franchises. The changes reflect a fresh perspective about past decisions that are now recognized as out-of-date with our times.
Scars Are Symbols of Who We Are
The United States of America is a pluralistic society that enjoys the benefits of both liberty and justice, of both stability and order. As Americans, we are a society that is sometimes unjust and sometimes restrictive, but always strives to get it right in time. Now is that time.
We have an obligation, as the living, to celebrate the deeds and the people that made us better as a union. That means we have the rightful authority and responsibility to reassess what symbols of our nation are worthy of who we are and who we wish to be.
Let’s not lament or cry when another Christopher Columbus, Robert E. Lee, or Jefferson Davis statue is melted to pig or pushed into the mud of the bay. Their legacies have been perpetuated under dubious intents. Their legacies no longer provide cultural salience. And let’s not trouble our minds over empty pedestals or empty shelves in the National Statuary Hall. Our legacies are being carved and shaped right now, and we need to clean up after ourselves.
If the same chisels and mallets, dynamite and jackhammers, are used to remove the mural of Stone Mountain, the resulting scar will be as Michelangelo said: the sculpture that already existed within the stone. The scar of what once stood will be the real work of art, the real story of history, that revives what our nation truly stands for. The scar will be a reminder of who we are to become.
—
Image Public Domain