#confederate monuments

[socialjusticeinamerica]

#republicans are modern day Confederates #confederate monuments

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

#us politics #republicans #conservatives #tweet #twitter #x #@esqueer_ #alejandra caraballo #robert e. lee #confederate states of america #fuck the confederates #confederate pride #fuck the confederacy #confederate monuments #elon musk #fuck billionaires #eat the rich #2023

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Confederate monuments bear what the anthropological theorist Michael Taussig would call a public secret: something that is privately known but collectively denied. It does no good to simply reveal the secret — in this case, to tell people that most of the Confederate monuments were erected not at the end of the Civil War, to honor those who fought, but at the height of Jim Crow, to entrench a system of racial hierarchy. That’s already part of their appeal. Dr. Taussig has argued that public secrets don’t lose their power unless they are transformed in a manner that does justice to the scale of the secret. He compares the process to desecration. How can you expect people to stop believing in their gods without providing some other way of making sense of this world and our future?

Swords Into Plowshares might have been the first to propose melting, but other communities are working out their own creative visions for Lee’s afterlife. One of the biggest changes so far has been at Arlington House, the historic plantation mansion at the center of Arlington National Cemetery, which is the official national Robert E. Lee Memorial. In 2021, Arlington House reopened with displays not only about Lee’s family, who lived there after they inherited it from Lee’s father-in-law, but also about the lives of the families enslaved there. Even Lee’s burial site at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. — where he served as president after the war — has changed. The university decided to focus on Lee the civilian rather than Lee the general, for example by moving a prominent portrait of him in uniform. And it constructed a wall to enclose the large sculpture of Lee that once claimed an insistent place in the university’s chapel.

Covering this story over the past few years, I’ve come to realize two things. First, when a monument disappears without a ceremony to mark why it is coming down, a community has no chance to recognize that it has itself changed. (Ideally the ceremony is public, but because of safety concerns, the melting I attended was not.) Second, if you are outraged that something’s happening to your community’s heroic statue of Lee, you’re not going to be any less outraged if the statue is moved to some hidden storeroom than if it’s thrown into a landfill. So if all changes, large or small, will be resisted, why not go for the ones with the most symbolic resonance?

That’s why the idea to melt Lee down, as violent as it might initially seem, struck me as so apt. Confederate monuments went up with rich, emotional ceremonies that created historical memory and solidified group identity. The way we remove them should be just as emotional, striking and memorable. Instead of quietly tucking statues away, we can use monuments one final time to bind ourselves together into new communities.

...

When the remaining legal barriers were cleared (including a last-minute lawsuit that sought to have the statue reassembled), Lee was finally ready to surrender to the furnace. The foundryman turned on the propane supply and laid Lee’s sword across the hole in the lid. He told the spectators that the metal had to get hot enough to release any moisture before he maneuvered it down through the hole into the crucible.

When he did, its blade stuck up out of the furnace for a moment, then melted down “like a stick of butter,” as Dr. Schmidt put it.

Lee’s face was the last piece to go into the crucible. Given how often the monument and its ideals were celebrated with flames — from Klansmen’s torches to the tiki torches of white nationalists in 2017 — it seemed fitting for flames to close over the monument.

...

Dr. Douglas, Swords Into Plowshares’ other co-founder, apologized that the ceremony could not be public. She thanked those in attendance, telling us we were witnessing it on behalf of Charlottesville’s residents, including those long gone who lived under slavery. Someday, she said, when we think of Civil War heroes, we will imagine not Lee but, instead, those who fought for their freedom against him.

The man in the protective visor dropped the red-hot piece of metal that once represented Lee on the ground. It fell to pieces, which he fed into the crucible. A line of cameras faced him, making new images of history as the old image finally disappeared in flames.

- Erin Thompson, "The Most Controversial Statue in America Surrenders to the Furnace." New York Times. October 24, 2023. Photo by Eze Amos.

#swords into plougshares #confederate monuments #robert e. lee #tear them down #historical monuments #american civil war #historical memory #united states history #united states politics

[gwydionmisha]

Because Of Course.

#Florida #Republicans #Pride Ban #Confederate Monuments #Jonathan Martin #News

[liluglydudefromdetroit]

"We are literally living the history that might be hidden from our children in the future." That line hit me so hard I had to share this everywhere! A brief history of why history is taught how it is in the United States

#us history #slavery #education #racism #confederate monuments #states rights #black people #white people #politics #black lives matter #black men #Florida #ron desantis #civil war

[ausetkmt]

Atlanta removing ‘Lion of the Confederacy’ statue from historic Oakland Cemetery

The city of Atlanta is set to remove a 127-year-old Confederate monument from Oakland Cemetery after it has repeatedly attracted vandals wielding sledgehammers and spray paint cans.

The City Council passed a resolution Monday evening declaring that the city should remove the “Lion of the Confederacy” monument and place it in temporary storage. The removal could happen as soon as this week, according to a member of City Council.

In recent years the statue has been defaced with graffiti, red latex and hit with objects like a pickaxe and sledgehammer.

The statue was built by T.M. Brady and dedicated on Confederate Memorial Day in 1894 to honor the 3,000 unknown Confederate dead resting in Oakland Cemetery. The statue depicts a wounded or dead lion with its right paw resting on a cannonball partially concealed by Confederate flag.

The lion’s removal follows years of discussion among city leaders about how to address contentious Confederate iconography in Atlanta. In 2017, then-mayor Kasim Reed signed off on a 40-page report written by an 11-member panel that included recommendations related to Confederate symbols in the city.ExplorePhotos: Confederate memorials in metro Atlanta

Among the recommendations was the renaming of Confederate Avenue in the Grant Park and Ormewood Park neighborhoods to United Avenue, and attaching contextual markers to monuments like the Lion of the Confederacy and a 65-foot-tall Confederate obelisk also located inside Oakland Cemetery.

What sets both objects apart from Confederate monuments that sit in front of courthouses, state capitols or on city streets is that they are not “in your face,” but are part of the statuary of the cemetery, said Sheffield Hale, president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center.

Carved from Georgia marble, the lion is modeled after the Lion of Lucerne in Lucerne, Switzerland — an 1821 sculpture memorializing the Swiss guards massacred during the French revolution. The 30-foot-long Swiss sculpture is carved into the face of a low cliff, and is considerably larger than the Oakland version.

Atlanta City Council member Carla Smith, a sponsor of the legislation to remove the lion, led the panel established by Reed and was a major force behind the contextual markers.

While the committee never recommended the removal of the lion, vandals have left the city little choice but to move it to an undisclosed location, Smith said.

“They’ve smashed the face, the nose is completely missing and the cost of trying restore it is becoming too much,” Smith said.

“There’s been this constant vandalism and constant drain on city resources trying to protect and restore it,” said Councilwoman Natalyn Archibong, whose district includes Oakland Cemetery.

Richard Harker, executive director of the Historic Oakland Foundation, said that since October 2019, the marker had been vandalized at least eight times and that the interpretive signage below the statue, including the contextual marker, had been defaced repeatedly, sometimes in broad daylight. City employees have spent 150 hours rehabbing the statue after instances of vandalism.

Harker said six permanent security cameras had recently been installed in the park, including a couple aimed directly at the lion. Extra security guards had been hired in the last several months to deter vandals.

“The city’s history is good, bad, ugly and beautiful, and the city has to wrestle with all those legacies so we can move forward,” Harker said. “This is another example of the city, in a sad, unfortunate way, of doing so.”

The City Council approved a $33,000 contract with Superior Rigging and Erecting Co. to remove the lion statue. The city has not said where it will be located long-term.

The Confederate statue is listed by the Smithsonian as a historically significant piece of funerary art, Hale said, but removing it is a matter of public safety as well as preservation.

Hale also mentioned that the tension associated with the sculpture could lead to violence “adjacent” to the statue.

In the years since the city’s report on Confederate iconography came out, local governments around the state and nation have taken steps to remove monuments that glorify the Confederacy amid widespread protests against racism. The Georgia state law that makes it difficult for local governments to relocate or remove Confederate monuments was also updated in 2019 to include language that allows for “appropriate measures for the preservation, protection and interpretation” of monuments.

The Confederate obelisk in downtown Decatur came down last June. A Confederate monument built in 1993 in Lawrenceville’s downtown square was removed earlier this year.

#Atlanta to remove ‘Lion of the Confederacy’ statue from Oakland Cemetery #lion of the confederacy #atlanta #confederacy #confederate monuments

[cmonstah]

Omitted from the current display is the fact that Helen Plane, who oversaw the Atlanta chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and helped launch the idea of a Confederate monument at Stone Mountain, had once written to the project’s original designer, Gutzon Borglum (who later went on to carve Mt. Rushmore), to encourage him to include Klansmen in the carving — an idea inspired by “The Birth of a Nation.”

“Since seeing this wonderful and beautiful picture of Reconstruction in the South,” she wrote, “I feel that it is due to the Ku Klux Klan which saved us from Negro domination and carpet-bag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?”

I write about a new doc that digs into the history of Stone Mountain. Find it here.

Photo by me.

#stone mountain #confederate monuments #georgia #granit #bas relief #art

[reasoningdaily]

Authorities have released civil rights attorney Jill Collen Jefferson from jail in Holmes County after Lexington Police arrested her on Saturday, June 10, while she was filming a traffic stop she saw after leaving an event. Police arrested the JULIAN president nine days after she complained about the department’s treatment of Black residents while meeting with U.S. Justice Department officials.

Jefferson’s attorney, Michael Carr, who said he “is very concerned (Lexington Police) engaged in a false arrest in this case,” informed the Mississippi Free Press this morning that she was being released. Bail bondsman Bonita Streeter also confirmed the release, saying officials had waived fees for the civil rights attorney’s release.

Jefferson, who is from Jones County, founded JULIAN in 2020. She named the organization, which conducts investigations into possible civil rights violations, after her mentor, longtime civil rights leader Julian Bond.

The arrest sparked a backlash from the community over the weekend.

“The citizens of Lexington are fearful of driving for fear of harassment from the police,” the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party said in a statement this morning condemning Collen’s arrest. “Innocent mentally ill citizens are brutalized on our streets and imprisoned unlawfully. Our elected officials have refused to act on this matter because these unlawful arrests are benefitting the city financially.”

‘I Guess She Thought That Was A Good Idea’

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who is with the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, visited Lexington on June 1 along with U.S. Attorney Darren J. LaMarca of the Southern District of Mississippi.

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party said its members “were feeling hopeful” after Clarke and LaMarca’s visit—until Jill Collen Jefferson’s arrest.

“Upon leaving an event, she witnessed police officers engaging with a citizen, but because of the numerous complaints against the police department, she decided to drive by the scene and record,” MFDP said. “While driving, an officer asked her to show her driver’s license Other officers approached the vehicle and began to pull her out. She was placed in handcuffs and put in the patrol car.”

Attorney Carr said police charged Jefferson with three misdemeanors, including failure to comply, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. But he told the Mississippi Free Press this morning that the police department had offered no “narrative supplement” to explain why they charged her with those offenses.

After this story first published, though, Carr shared a recording with the Mississippi Free Press that his office obtained that he says includes remarks the arresting officer made about Jefferson. This reporter could not verify the identity of the person speaking in the recording, however.

“I told her to give me her license five, six, seven, eight times,” a man can be heard saying on the recording. “She argued she ain’t got to. … She was riding by filming. I guess she thought that was a good idea.”

The Mississippi Free Press reached out to the Lexington Police Department for comment this morning, but an employee said there was “no one here right now to speak about that matter” and to call back later. Reached again this afternoon following this story’s initial publication, the department again said no one was available to speak.

Jefferson Speaks: ‘I Did Not Resist’

Later this afternoon, attorney Carr sent this reporter a video of Jill Jefferson speaking with members of the media in Lexington, where she accused the local police of ���terrorizing Black people here.”

She said she was driving around with a passenger when she saw the police had someone pulled over and decided to film the incident. The passenger, she said, got out of the car, fearing the police would pull Jefferson over for filming them.

“As soon as the cops saw me, Officer Scott Walters started flagging me down with his flashlight,” Jefferson told reporters. “I stopped, I let my window down, and he said, ‘Show me your ID.’ I said, ‘Why do you need to see my ID?’ … And then he pulled out his taser. And I said, ‘You’re going to tase me?’ And that point, I called my attorney. He said, ‘Jill, of course this is not right, but just show them your ID so you can get this over with.'”

Jefferson said she followed her lawyer’s suggestion, but the situation only escalated from there.

“I held up my license. At that point, Officer Walters snatched my phone out of my hand, he slammed it on the top of the car,” she said. “He started trying to yank at my door handle, trying to pull it open. My car door was locked. He reached through the window and unlocked my car door through the inside. He pulled the door open, pulled me out of the car, pushed me against the car, and then proceeded to arrest me—cuff me. He put my hands behind my back. I did not resist.”

Jefferson said that, after the officer put her in the back of a police car, Jefferson said another officer joined Walters searching her car.

“Then they went to the driver’s side and Officer Walters knelt down and put his hand under the seat and he said, ‘Oh, looky here.’ He’d found my firearm,” she said. “And he said, ‘I sure hope it’s stolen.’ At that point, he came back to the police car. I told him the search was illegal. He told me he would never hire me. He told me I was a shit lawyer since I didn’t know about search incident to arrest. He told me I was being arrested for failure to comply. I told him I had not done anything wrong. He said nothing and shut the car door. He took me to the police station.”

‘It’s Actually Beyond A Breaking Point’

A month later, JULIAN filed a lawsuit against the Lexington Police Department, alleging that it “operates within a culture of corruption and lawlessness, daily and habitually subjecting Black citizens to harassment and brutality, in violation of their civil rights.”

“We are just asking the court to restrain them from targeting, harassing, assaulting Black citizens and violating their constitutional rights in other ways,” Jill Collen Jefferson told the Mississippi Free Press last year. “It’s at a breaking point—it’s actually beyond a breaking point.”

Carr said Jefferson’s court date is set for July 13 at the Lexington Municipal Court.

Lexington is 86% Black and 13% white, but has a deeply racist past. At the dedication of a Confederate monument there in 1908, Confederate veteran Wiley N. Nash said that “these Confederate monuments, these sacred memorials, tells in silent but potent language, that the white people of the South shall rule and govern the Southern states forever.”

The monument still stands at the center of Lexington’s town square.

This story has been updated to add comments from Jefferson after her release.

#Jill Jefferson #Jill Collen Jefferson #Mississippi #white supremacy #white cops #racism #white people in the south #Lexington Releases Civil Rights Lawyer Arrested Filming Officers #white hate #confederate monuments

[almackey]

The Week in Confederate Heritage

The American Civil War was fought by the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, 11 southern states that left the Union in a conflict over slavery. Lee became overall commander of the Confederate States Army. Bob Karp/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa We begin with this article out of Florida. “Confederate monuments have come down in Orlando, Tampa and most recently Jacksonville as…

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#american-civil-war #civil-war #Confederate Monuments

[qupritsuvwix]

#cj hunt #confederate monuments

[tomorrowusa]

West Point is likely to remove a giant portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from its library. Considering that Lee was most famous for helping to lead a treasonous rebellion against the United States, it is bizarre that he should be honored for doing so at the US Military Academy.

Like so many Confederate memorials, monuments, and remembrances, this painting didn’t even go up until long after the Civil War ended; it dates back just to the early 1950s. President Truman had just desegregated the armed forces in 1948 and this painting may have been a form of backlash by the keepers of the ‘Lost Cause”.

For 70 years, the slave-owning Confederate general Robert E. Lee has stared down at West Point cadets from a massive portrait in the academy’s library, a slave guiding his horse in the background.

But that portrait could be coming down.

Yep, the portrait in question depicts a slave tending Lee’s horse.

Contrary to what the Confederate branch of the culture warriors may be saying, this is not a full scale cancellation of Lee.

The commission is expected to recommend that West Point — which is now led by the first Black superintendent in its history, Army Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams — remove anything that commemorates Lee in association with the Confederacy, one of the people said. Anything “historic” that commemorates Lee when he was superintendent may remain.

Lee was superintendent of West Point before the Civil War and was still loyal to the Union. Images or references to him from that era may remain. One is an old portrait of him in a Union blue uniform.

This nuanced approach may provide a template for dealing with various US historical figures who had mixed records.

#robert e. lee #confederacy #confederate monuments #us military academy #west point #us civil war

[gwydionmisha]

#Florida #Confederate Monuments #Manatee County #Republican Agenda #News

[ausetkmt]

we're having a really bad storm day and that means you have to read the stories

this whole Confederate monument and flag thing is hitting a pitch this summer and we need everybody to jump in where they are and express their true feelings on why America is still supporting the Confederacy in 2023

Twitter is now called x and nobody knows how to say it so we'll be moving back to posting some of our Twitter feed later in the week. till then please follow reblog and share because without you we wouldn't be here

#ausetkmt #the Confederacy #Confederate monuments #July 25th 2023

[socialjusticeinamerica]

#fuck the confederacy #confederate monument

[rebelyells]

I was very impressed with my Southern Brethren in TX. God bless y’all this beautiful Texas day.

#civil war #austin texas #confederates #history #monument #southerners #states rights

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1862 – The Irish Brigade suffered over 60% casualties at the Battle of Antietam at an area that came to be known as Bloody Lane.

At the Battle of Antietam, the Irish Brigade led its division in attacking the infamous Bloody Lane. In preparation for the deadly work ahead, Father William Corby, one of the brigade’s chaplains and future president of Notre Dame, rode down the firing line and administered a general rite of absolution to the men. Thomas Meagher advanced to the crest of a hill overlooking a brigade of North…

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#69th New York Militia #American Civil War #Bloody Lane #Captain McGee #Confederates #Father William Corby #Fighting 69th #Gen. Israel Richardson #The Battle of Antietam #The Battle of Antietam Monument #The Irish Brigade #Thomas Meagher #Unions