Buried history
Confederate monuments conceal the real story of our nation — and our city.
On Lowes Island, about 100 miles northeast of Charlottesville, Va., rests a monument to a Civil War battle where the casualties were so great that the spot became known as “The River of Blood.”
The monument — a flagpole and plaque — was installed by Donald Trump during a 2009 renovation of a golf club that he had purchased. In line with the now-president’s penchant for self-promotion, Trump even quoted himself on the historic plaque.
“It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!”
Just one problem: There’s no such battle as the “The River of Blood.”
“No. Uh-uh. No way. Nothing like that ever happened there,” Richard Gillespie, the executive director of the Mosby Heritage Area Association, told the New York Times in 2015. The closest Civil War battle had been 11 miles up the river at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff.
To borrow from the president’s own vernacular: Fake history. Sad!
Trump was never known for his preservationist bona fides as a developer. In fact, the art history world has long reviled Trump for his destruction of two priceless Art Deco friezes during the construction of Trump Tower.
But now, after white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville to the chants of “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us,” Trump has cast himself as a preservationist extraordinaire in defense of a statue of Robert E. Lee — the very cause that attracted hate to Charlottesville in the first place. We’re sure the “very fine people” that Trump saw among the torches and swastikas appreciate his support. But he’s not alone in defense of Confederate monuments.
Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement Thursday rejecting calls for an honest and open discussion about the appropriateness of certain statues and plaques on the Texas Capitol grounds.
“Instead of trying to bury our past, we must learn from it and ensure it doesn’t happen again,” said Abbott.
Tributes to secession are anything but neutral representations of the past. They serve neither as textbooks nor biographies.
Monuments honoring the Confederacy were erected for a very specific reason — to wipe out the memory of Reconstruction-era equality that briefly existed after the Civil War and replace it with a myth of the Lost Cause.
This intense and pervasive effort was launched decades after the Civil War had ended, during a period of time, roughly 1890-1920, that historians view as a nadir for African-Americans. Thousands were lynched and rigid segregation laws were implemented throughout the South. These edifices remain a testament to those decades of hate.
Here in Texas, and across the nation, statues were erected, streets renamed and plaques installed all in a unified goal of crafting a sanitized version of American history — one written by white supremacists. It is a history that has as much grounding in reality as Trump’s “River of Blood.”
For years, Houston lawmakers and activists have sought to roll back this propaganda and resurrect an honest history that had been buried alive. It is a history where the stories of Texas slaves, abolitionists and civil rights advocates aren’t forced to take a back seat.
Only recently has this effort borne fruit. The Houston Independent School District voted in 2016 to rename schools dedicated to Confederate figures. And the city of Houston renamed the Third Ward’s Dowling Street — as in Confederate hero Dick Dowling — to Emancipation Avenue.
Now Mayor Sylvester Turner has called for a study that will document existing Confederate monuments. There are many paths forward — moving them to a museum; destroying them; installing explanatory plaques; donating them to historic societies; erecting new statues that put history in context.
Whatever path the city chooses, the mayor’s goal should be to rededicate public spaces to the true values of our diverse city. These are values like liberty, equality, justice and opportunity.
It is time to write the real history of Houston.
Monuments honoring the Confederacy were erected for a very specific reason — to wipe out the memory of Reconstruction-era equality that briefly existed after the Civil War and replace it with a myth of the Lost Cause.