Keep monuments; examine past

Historical monuments are meant to be flattering to their subjects. I get that.

Everything but slavery, the “cornerstone of the Confederacy,” and this country’s long history of racial injustice is somehow memorialized in public places. Believe me, I get that too. But neither of those facts, in my mind, justifies the removal of Confederate monuments dotting our nation’s landscape.

Some of you agreed with me, calling my words, in a previous column about the monuments, “the voice of reason.” It was my opinion that removing these pieces of our history, however painful, is as wrongheaded as sanitizing it.

More than a dozen of you wrote to share your opinion and nearly 600 commented online in a sometimes heated but otherwise civil and thoughtful debate.

It sparked a conversation, which is one of the reasons why Sheffield Hale, president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center, and I are advocating keeping them around.

“An honest examination of our history requires us to confront a painful, ambiguous past — an examination that for many is difficult, challenging and distressing,” Hale said. “That examination can also be provocative, stimulating and inspiring.”

But let’s be clear, our position is not to maintain the status quo. It is a suggestion that we change the conversation and convert these former objects of veneration into historic artifacts, calling them out for what they are — monuments to the Lost Cause and its corollary, white supremacy.

Keeping them in place without additional context is as problematic as erasure.

That’s why Hale and his staff created a tool at atlantahistorycenter.com/ monuments they hope will help people research and tell the stories these monuments

Staples

KENT D. JOHNSON / KDJOHNSON@AJC.COM Stone Mountain, which is adorned with a huge carving depicting Confederate heroes, is classified as a Confederate memorial by state statute.