October 2017 - Parks & Recreation - 40

MONUMENTS

Where We Are Today
Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12,
2017, one dead and 19 injured when a
neo-Nazi used a car as a weapon against
counterprotesters of a rally of the Ku
Klux Klan, Nazis and other alt-right
hate groups. The hate groups had organized their rally to protest the removal
of a statue of Robert E. Lee that had

been installed in 1924 in a public park,
which, until June of this year, had been
known as Lee Park but is now called
Emancipation Park.
Two years ago, nine innocent people were gunned down in a church in
Charleston, South Carolina, by a hatefilled young man and, as a result, that
state removed the Confederate Battle

Lost Cause:

Facing military defeat in the Civil War and economic and political collapse after the war, many
Southern whites were looking for explanations and meaning to make sense of their condition. The answer came in revisionist history that is known as the " Lost Cause. "
In the Articles of Confederation that the Southern states passed to break with the Union,
they give as their primary reason that the Fugitive Slave Act, a federal law, was not being
enforced by many Northern states. So, they were in favor of a federal law that supported
the slave economy, and opposed to a number of Northern states that were not enforcing
this federal law.
Counter to this reality, the " Lost Cause " recast the purpose of the war and the reason for
the South's defeat. This narrative became very popular in books and movies, and influenced
many generations to have a warped view of the causes and outcomes of the Civil War. Many
elements of this still linger with us today. The elements included:
* Slavery was not the primary cause of the war, but rather it was a campaign for states' rights.
* Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and some other Confederate Generals were held up as
representing Southern nobility, virtue and values.
* Military defeats were explained by overwhelming numbers of the Union Army and subordinates to Lee who did not follow his orders correctly.
* Slavery was cast as a benign institution and masters as benevolent.
This mythology took root in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The most popular movie of its time
was " Birth of a Nation " which debuts in 1915. This movie glorified members of the Ku Klux Klan as
noble heroes. Gone with the Wind was a best-selling book in 1936, and a hit movie in 1939, and it
exemplifies many of the elements of this movement.
The most painful part of the Lost Cause is that it gave political cover for the worst and
most violent period of
segregation. During
this time, states' rights
became code for oppressive Jim Crow laws
and lynching.
Most of the Confederate monuments
we see today were a
part of this political/
cultural
movement
to promote white supremacy.

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Flag that had been a part of the state flag
for decades, since that gunman used this
flag as a symbol of white supremacy.
These two events, along with the rise
of the alt-right, have made many people
question the role of Confederate symbols and monuments in civic life today.
These symbols were used extensively by
racist forces in the early part of the 20th
century, and they are being used again
today by hate groups.
What Are These Monuments About?
To understand these monuments, we
need to look 50-70 years after the Civil
War. In the first 20 years following the
conflict, groups of veterans from both
sides funded monuments. This first
wave was mostly placed on battlefields,
and, rather than images of individuals,
they were mostly stones and obelisks inscribed with the units that fought in a
battle. Much of this time was the period
called " Reconstruction. " Former slaves
were experiencing a hopeful time with
voting rights, land, literacy and other
benefits from the newly formed Freedmen's Bureaus. This period ended by the
mid-to-late 1870s, and these progressive
efforts were quickly reversed.
Most of the monuments that we are
debating today were erected in the period from 1890 to 1930, and many of
them were designed to glorify what
became known as the " Lost Cause "
- a period of revisionist history. This
movement attempted to erase or obscure the fact that the South had broken away from the Union, primarily to
continue slavery. This false narrative fit
the efforts in the South during the early
20th century, when a system of local
and state laws was put in place that
enforced segregation and suppressed
voting rights and educational opportunities for African-Americans. During
much of the 20th century, " states'
rights " was code for allowing local segregation efforts, called Jim Crow laws,
to continue.

October 2017 - Parks & Recreation

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