I feel compelled to weigh in on the issue of removing Southern Civil War statues. I’m on the bring-’em-down side. It isn’t a Northerner thing, or an anti-Southern-history thing. It’s the significance of many of the statues themselves.
A good number of them weren’t erected to commemorate the bravery of the Southern soldier or the grand leadership of a Confederate general. Nor were they erected to celebrate all that’s good in the Southern soul.
Instead, they went up during the Jim Crow era and as a reaction against the Civil Rights Movement. They were meant to be reminders that some sections of our nation were still not prepared to consider Blacks as equals–and to promote the superiority of Whites and defeat the efforts of the Civil Rights Movement.
That’s why I want the statues taken down or moved to private places or at least places where they aren’t given prominence and reverence. I’m deeply saddened by these reminders that bigotry still exists in my country.