Black History Month & Arlington
Recently, Arlington National Cemetery removed its massive Confederate Memorial which was erected decades after Reconstruction when national unity was desired. The memorial imparted a “forgive and forget” response toward those who had rebelled against their fellow Americans.
Overlooked was that many distinguished Americans fought against our country or otherwise supported the Confederacy. More than 250 West Pointers, including Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson; more than 70 members of Congress; former cabinet members, including Jefferson Davis; two future Supreme Court justices and a chief justice fought for/supported the Confederacy.
The Confederate Memorial on America’s most hallowed 639 acres sent a subliminal message that violently rebelling against a duly elected government when one didn’t approve its policies was acceptable. This memorial exalted a conflict which took more American lives than all our other wars combined.
This national reconciliation that followed the Spanish-American War and the glorification of the Lost Cause seemingly united America, but did it? Until the 1960s, the constitutional rights accorded African-Americans were ignored.
After the 1870 ratification of the 15th Amendment, African-Americans were elected to local, state, and federal offices. By 1901, the former Confederate states suppressed Black voter participation, permitted more than 100 lynchings annually, and allowed other anti-Black violence to almost always be unpunished.
From 1901 until 1929, there wasn’t one Black congressman to champion the needs or voice the discontent of Black citizens. During 1963’s March on Washington, Congress consisted of five Black representatives, barely 1% of the total when African-Americans comprised 11% of our population.
Only after George Floyd’s murder has America taken steps to remove Confederate names from Army bases. What country allows a beautiful national monument, honoring insurrectionists, by placing it next to those honoring our nation’s defenders?
What country honors a rebellion’s leaders by naming its military facilities and numerous public schools, issuing commemorative stamps and coins, and celebrating a state holiday after them? What country honors the rebellion’s military leader at the university which trains its elite military officers?
There were many valid reasons to have removed the Confederate Memorial from Arlington, however, removing it fails to educate any future visitors about America’s misguided attempt at reconciliation.
In August, I visited the memorial and the graves surrounding it. Today, those 400-plus graves look like others of that era except they surround a large empty space where the Confederate Memorial once towered. Without the monument, passersby will assume that America’s defenders are buried there.
Across America, hundreds of statues and monuments glorifying Confederates, racist politicians, and slaveowners have been removed. Monuments honoring African-Americans, Native Americans, and other under-represented Americans will undoubtedly replace them. That’s good!
Today, there are calls in some quarters to remove monuments to Columbus, all European explorers and exploiters of Native Americans, and slave-owning leaders and presidents such as Washington, Jefferson, and almost all our first 16.
Before engaging in a 21st century Reign of Terror by removing these reminders of all our racially misguided past, will we be short-changing future generations by denying them the opportunity to learn from our past even if it exposes uncomfortable truths? Even America’s founding document was based on a half-truth “that all men are created equal.”
Far more dangerous to the health of our country are statements made by Nikki Haley and Donald Trump in their quests to be leader of the free world.
Haley remarked that the causes of the Civil War were “{arguments over} how the government was going to run” and “freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” not slavery, which is the war’s undisputed cause. Haley also claimed that “America has never been a racist country.” Maybe Haley learned her history at South Carolina’s Orangeburg Preparatory School, established in the 1960s to thwart public-school integration.
Trump, leader of the Republican Party, didn’t even know that Lincoln was a Republican, or that some of his own party’s mid-19th century leaders were more radical than Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Trump felt the Civil War would’ve been unnecessary if only Lincoln had negotiated with the South.
American schools do a poor job teaching history. February is Black History Month. We shouldn’t exacerbate our ignorance of history by obfuscating, denying, or manufacturing it. Instead, let’s study our unvarnished past and learn from our flawed history.