Confederate flag/statue banning thread

[Innula Zenovka]

I've just finished reading How the Word is Passed, which is very relevant to this thread, I think, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

How the Word Is Passed

Poet and contributor to The Atlantic Clint Smith’s revealing, contemporary portrait of America as a slave owning nation Beginning in his...

www.goodreads.com

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America eBook : Smith, Clint: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America eBook : Smith, Clint: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

www.amazon.co.uk

 

[Innula Zenovka]

How Cities in the American North Can Reckon with Their Monuments

There are no statues honoring the Confederacy to be found in Boston or Cambridge, but there are plenty of historic memorials that obscure the achievements of Black Americans.

www.newyorker.com

Evernote link

 

[Free]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

If there was any monument to the Confederacy that should have stayed, it should have been this one.

Spoiler

Clown art.

 

[Free]

On ignore follow-up posting simply for the description.

 

[Romana]

On ignore follow-up posting simply for the description.

 

[detrius]

If there was any monument to the Confederacy that should have stayed, it should have been this one.

Spoiler

Clown art.

I think the people living back in the day already figured out the perfect way to create memorials for Confederate generals.

Every single one of those grotesque statues is the equivalent of taking a big fat dump on the Arlington National Cemetery.

Erecting those things was a vulgar act. It was the attempt of racist gangs to mark their territory. But instead of using grafitti tags, they used bronze and stone*.

That shit must go.






*and more often cheaper materials, such as fiberglass and plastic

 

[WolfEyes]

Not too far from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is section 16. It holds the remains of 482 confederate soldiers and the Confederate Memorial. The cemetery began as a Civil War burial ground in 1864, but it wasn’t until 1901 that Confederate Soldiers were recognized at Arlington.

In the years following the Civil War, feelings between the North and the South remained bitter and tense. Hundreds of confederates were buried at the cemetery, but their family and friends were not allowed to decorate the graves. In some extreme cases, they were even denied access to the cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery Tours | Washington DC Tours

The Official Tour of Arlington Cemetery. Learn about the history and significance with our fully narrated Arlington National Cemetery tours.

www.arlingtontours.com

 

[Free]

Sort of related.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Sort of related.

A non-grumpy good for that.

 

[Free]

Ooh, an early Halloween present!

Confederate monument melted down to create new, more inclusive public art

Communities across the American South have removed Confederate monuments from public spaces in recent years. Some have gone to museums, others are locked away in storage.

But one particularly controversial statue from Charlottesville, Va. is on a different journey — to be transformed into something new.

The massive bronze sculpture of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, in uniform, astride his horse Traveller, stood in a downtown Charlottesville park for nearly a century. It was at the center of a deadly white nationalist rally in 2017, when Neo-Nazis and white supremacists tried to stop the city's plans to remove the statue.

Charlottesville prevailed in a protracted legal battle with the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups, and donated the Lee statue to a coalition that proposed to melt it down and create a more inclusive public art installation.

"We want to transform something that has been toxic in the Charlottesville community," says Jalane Schmidt, a religious studies professor at the University of Virginia and one the project's organizers. "We want to transform it into a piece of art that the community can be can be proud of, and gather around and not feel excluded or intimidated."

 

[Free]

Dribs and drabs, but still appreciated.

Confederate memorial to be removed from Arlington National Cemetery

A Confederate memorial is to be removed from Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia in the coming days, a cemetery official said.

www.militarytimes.com

A Confederate memorial is to be removed from Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia in the coming days, part of the push to remove symbols that commemorate the Confederacy from military-related facilities, a cemetery official said Saturday.

The decision ignores a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.

Safety fencing has been installed around the memorial, and officials anticipate completing the removal by Dec. 22, the Arlington National Cemetery said in an email. During the removal, the surrounding landscape, graves and headstones will be protected, the Arlington National Cemetery said.

Even still, some of them cannot let go.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin disagrees with the decision and plans to move the monument to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said.

 

[Free]

An excellent outcome.

Georgia replaces confederate monument with bronze statue of late Rep. John Lewis

Workers placed a bronze statue of the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) on the grounds of the Dekalb County Courthouse Friday — the same site where a Confederate monument was removed in 2020.

Internationally acclaimed sculptor Basil Watson, who designed the 12-foot-tall statue, watched as the statue was placed ahead of its official unveiling planned for Aug. 24.

“It’s exciting to see it going up and exciting for the city because of what he represents and what it’s replacing,” Watson told The Associated Press.

Lewis, who represented Georgia in Congress for over three decades, first rose to national prominence during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s when he urged others to get into “good trouble.” He also led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the protests and was a confidante of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.