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The Fall of Historic Statues

  • Apr 15, 2021
  • 4 min read

Evan Frost/Minnesota Public Radio, via Associated Press


The past year, after the tragic death of George Floyd, over 7 million flooded the streets to protest the systematic and institutionalized racism in America. With this came the call to remove statues that glorify and honor people such as Jefferson Davis (president of the Confederate States of America), Robert E. Lee Confederate general), and Nathan Bedford Forrest (leader of the KKK). While many say this is messing with history, over half of the people say that these statues and symbols should be taken down. For historians like Karen Cox, this simply means that “our society is evolving”.


A lot of people have presented the argument that these statues represent history no matter how bloody and complex, however, these statues misrepresent history and glorify people that stood and fought for things such as slavery. Statues of historic figures, such as slave-owning presidents or imperialists like Christopher Columbus, promote similar oppressive and revisionist messages. Glenn Foster, the founder of The Freedom Neighborhood, stated of the Emancipation Memorial, which depicts Lincoln over a kneeling freed slave, “When I look at that statue, I’m reminded of my freedom and my liberation is only dictated by white peoples’ terms.” This is not simply just a “complex” history, it’s one built on the blood of others.


Edward Colston in Bristol on June 7.Credit Ben Birchall/Press Association, via Associated Press


Many are calling for the glorification of people such as Christopher Columbus to stop. Ana-Lucia Araujo, a professor of history at Howard University says, “Columbus represents the European conquest of the Americas that led to the killing and the enslavement of Native American populations, and then the massive importation of enslaved Africans to the Americas.” Yes, our history must be remembered, and yes, our history must be taught, but in a way that doesn’t require those who have long been hurt and discriminated against to walk past the people responsible for that hurt on a regular basis.


We shouldn’t fear taking down these statues because we think we’ll forget. Historian Karen Cox compared these statues to other physical symbols, such as “coloreds only” signs. She points out that while those signs have been removed nobody has forgotten about them. "I mean, there are hundreds, hundreds of books on the Civil War out there, you know, numerous documentaries that explain the Civil War," she said. "People are not going to forget who Robert E. Lee was because they removed a Lee monument, right? So the history isn't going anywhere. History is always going to be there.”


Not only are these statues a reminder of past systematic and institutionalized racism but also the racism in the present. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ph.D., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, notes that “enduringly charged symbols of the former Confederacy add to our fears that, instead of embracing the promise of democracy in a diverse society, some want to return us to a far more restrictive time, when freedom was circumscribed by race.” Until June 10th a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America has stood since it was erected in 1907. The Confederacy fought for slavery and while they stated other reasons for succeeding their main reason was they relied on the free labor slaves provided them with. That being said there's no reason to keep a statue honoring the man that led the side that fought for those ideas.


Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader, via Associated Press


“We can’t get to learning from our history if we keep accepting that racism should be celebrated in American history,” according to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Ph.D., Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard University. These statues were built to honor white supremacists and are only preserving the discrimination and injustice done against black Americans.


"I'm an African American woman. Why do I have to pass a monument of Robert E. Lee, a person that fought to enslave, or to continue to enslave me and people that were like me?" Lecia Brooks, outreach director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said. "It's disrespectful at best. I'm a citizen of this country. I should not be exposed to that." Of about 5,193 public statues of people in the United States, only 394 are of women, and even fewer are of black Americans or other people of color. There was even a petition in Tennessee that gained over 22,000 signatures to replace all Confederate. There are so many other people that we could honor with statues that accurately represent diversity and progress.


These statues reflect the values we want to publicly display and it sends a message about the people we as a country are honoring. “Critics of the statues have said they celebrate racism and tell a false narrative of the Civil War, and in the case of Columbus and other colonial figures, genocide against Indigenous populations.”(Business Insider) These symbols of oppression, discrimination, and white supremacy should have no place in the 21st century.


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