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Source: The New York Times
The Most Controversial Statue in America Surrenders to the Furnace
By Erin Thompson | October 27, 2023
Dr. Thompson is the author of "Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments."
Jalane Schmidt and Andrea Douglas
Last Saturday in a small foundry, a man in heat-resistant attire pulled down his gold-plated visor, turned on his plasma torch and sliced into the face of Robert E. Lee. The hollow bronze head glowed green and purple as the flame burned through layers of patina and wax. Drops of molten red metal cascaded to the ground.
I stood next to Andrea Douglas and Jalane Schmidt, who had invited me to witness the last moments of the figure that had gazed down on Charlottesville, Va., from atop a massive steed from 1924, when it was installed, until 2021, when it was removed by the City Council. Dr. Douglas and Dr. Schmidt are the founders of the Swords Into Plowshares project, a community group that led a campaign to melt the statue down and use the metal to make a new public artwork.
In August 2017 these demonstrations culminated in the Unite the Right rally, during which a white nationalist rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing a woman named Heather D. Heyer and injuring dozens of others. Then came George Floyd and the summer of Black Lives Matter. In cities across the country, statues of Confederate generals attracted new scrutiny.
By my count, more than a hundred Confederate monuments came off their pedestals during our nation's recent racial reckoning. But after those tumultuous months, the once-furious debate seemed to evaporate. Town councils shifted their focus; activists moved on to other issues. Yet we never reached any consensus about what should become of these artifacts. Some were reinstalled with additional historical context or placed in private hands, but many simply disappeared into storage. I like to think of them as America's strategic racism reserve.
What should we do with them? Just leaving them there for some future generation to deal with dishonors the intensity of emotions for all involved. But each possible outcome has costs and consequences. Each carries important symbolic weight. And no, we can't just give them all to the Smithsonian.
The way our communities dispose of these artifacts may influence America's racial dynamic over the next century, just as erecting them did for the hundred-year period now ending. Three years after George Floyd’s death, seven years after Ms. Bryant's petition, 99 years after the monument’s installation and 158 years after the end of the Civil War, it's high time we start figuring this out.
Please go to The New York Times to continue reading.
I stood next to Andrea Douglas and Jalane Schmidt, who had invited me to witness the last moments of the figure that had gazed down on Charlottesville, Va., from atop a massive steed from 1924, when it was installed, until 2021, when it was removed by the City Council. Dr. Douglas and Dr. Schmidt are the founders of the Swords Into Plowshares project, a community group that led a campaign to melt the statue down and use the metal to make a new public artwork.
In August 2017 these demonstrations culminated in the Unite the Right rally, during which a white nationalist rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing a woman named Heather D. Heyer and injuring dozens of others. Then came George Floyd and the summer of Black Lives Matter. In cities across the country, statues of Confederate generals attracted new scrutiny.
By my count, more than a hundred Confederate monuments came off their pedestals during our nation's recent racial reckoning. But after those tumultuous months, the once-furious debate seemed to evaporate. Town councils shifted their focus; activists moved on to other issues. Yet we never reached any consensus about what should become of these artifacts. Some were reinstalled with additional historical context or placed in private hands, but many simply disappeared into storage. I like to think of them as America's strategic racism reserve.
What should we do with them? Just leaving them there for some future generation to deal with dishonors the intensity of emotions for all involved. But each possible outcome has costs and consequences. Each carries important symbolic weight. And no, we can't just give them all to the Smithsonian.
The way our communities dispose of these artifacts may influence America's racial dynamic over the next century, just as erecting them did for the hundred-year period now ending. Three years after George Floyd’s death, seven years after Ms. Bryant's petition, 99 years after the monument’s installation and 158 years after the end of the Civil War, it's high time we start figuring this out.
Please go to The New York Times to continue reading.
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