Don’t rush scrapping of statues: historians
US towns hit roadblocks
NEW YORK, Aug 26, (Agencies): It’s not just about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
The national soul-searching over whether to take down monuments to the Confederacy’s demigods has extended to other historical figures accused of wrongdoing, including Christopher Columbus (brutality toward Native Americans), the man for whom Boston’s Faneuil Hall is named (slave trader) and former Philadelphia Mayor (bigotry).
Historians interviewed by The Associated Press offered varying thoughts about where exactly the line should be drawn in judging someone’s statueworthiness, but they agreed on one thing: Scrapping a monument is not a decision that should be made in haste during political fervor.
“If we do this in some willy-nilly way, we will regret it,” cautioned Yale University historian David Blight, an expert on slavery. “I am very wary of a rush to judgment about what we hate and what we love and what we despise and what we’re offended by.”
Blight and other historians say the way to determine whether to remove these monuments, Confederate or otherwise, is through discussions that weigh many factors, among them: the reason behind when and why the monument was built. Where it’s placed. The subject’s contribution to society weighed against the alleged wrongdoing. Historical significance. And the artistic value of the monument itself.
Some historians also say a statue in a public place can serve an important educational purpose, even if the history is ugly, that might be lost if the monument were junked or consigned to a museum.
Rizzo
Hiding
“By taking monuments down or hiding them away, we facilitate forgetting,” said Alfred Brophy, a law professor at the University of Alabama who has been studying the issue. “It purchases absolution too inexpensively. There is a value in owning our history.”
Monuments to Confederate-era figures have been slowly coming down around the country since the 2015 fatal shooting of nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, by a 23-yearold white racist. But after the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, this month during a white-supremacist protest against the removal of a Lee statue, the movement picked up steam.
In New York, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered a 90-day review of “symbols of hate” on city property, arguing that one of the first that should go is a plaque to Philippe Petain, a World War I hero later convicted of treason for heading the collaborationist Vichy government in Nazi-occupied France during World War II.
Activists in New York and San Jose, California, are targeting statues of Columbus, who is seen as a hero to many, particularly Italian-Americans, but a murderous colonizer to Native Americans and others.
Some question where will it end. If New York’s 76-foot (23-meter) Columbus statue is removed, then what about Columbus Circle, where it stands? And the Columbus Day holiday?
Universities, too, are removing statues. Stockton University in New Jersey pulled a bust of its namesake Richard Stockton, a slave owner who signed the Declaration of Independence.
In Boston, an advocacy group wants to rename Faneuil Hall, the Colonial meeting place nicknamed the “Cradle of Liberty,” because merchant Peter Faneuil had ties to the slave trade. In Philadelphia, a city councilwoman is leading the push to take down a likeness of Rizzo, the tough-on-crime mayor and police commissioner during the 1960s and ’70s who reigned over a police force widely seen as brutal and racist.
Also under scrutiny is a monument in New York’s Central Park to J. Marion Sims, a 19th-century physician who developed pioneering techniques in gynecology by operating on slave women.
Meanwhile, as early as November, the stretch of Jefferson Davis Highway that runs through Alexandria, Virginia, will boast a new title after the city council voted to erase the name of the Confederacy’s president.
But the city’s neighbors to the north in Arlington are powerless to initiate a similar change, even though local officials would like to follow Alexandria’s example.
Major
The difference lies in a simple distinction: Unlike Alexandria, Arlington is technically a county, not a city, and under Virginia law cannot alter major road names without permission from the state legislature.
As officials across the United States increasingly consider excising Confederate names from streets, schools and monuments following the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, many are confronting bureaucratic and legal obstacles.
In some cases, the local laws impose a series of steps. In Austin, a liberal bastion in the heart of Republican Texas, the city council recently began the process of renaming Robert E. Lee Road and Jeff Davis Avenue.
Austin’s ordinances call for every person who owns property along either street to be notified, and if anyone objects, the council must hold a public hearing on the proposed change. Meanwhile, the city’s traffic engineer, fire department and police department must review the proposal along with the local gas company and the US Postal Service, among other agencies.
“It’s a process that is fairly involved,” said Austin Councilwoman Ann Kitchen, whose district includes Robert E. Lee Road.
The Dallas Independent School District will take up whether to rename several schools named for Confederate generals at a Sept 14 meeting.
In a 1,300-word provision, the board’s own policies lay out a lengthy procedure for naming or renaming a facility: The proposal has to come from the school itself and must be backed by at least one member of the parent-teacher association, the administration and a state-mandated “site-based decision-making committee.” The policy also calls for such changes to be considered only after April 1, near the end of the school year.