Cooler but still well above normal this week

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

In Richmond, Va., the former capital of the Confederacy, a bronze statue of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson sitting triumphantly astride his horse, 

, no longer towers above that city's Monument Avenue.

 who gathered in the pouring rain earlier this week, work crews cut the statue from its granite base, and after hours of labor, a crane 

 to be put in storage, at least temporarily.

Jackson's dethroning came on orders from Richmond Mayor 

, who claimed emergency powers to act in the interest of public safety. "We've had 33 days of unrest," Stoney 

. "It's time to move beyond the lost cause and embrace the righteous cause. We can be more than just the capital of the Confederacy. It's time for us to be the capital of compassion."

 memorial is emblematic of a nationwide reckoning with race that has re-energized debates over which historical figures we honor and how.

The scrutiny goes well beyond monuments to the Confederacy. Among those whose legacies are coming under sharp review is Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the U.S., who served from 1913-21.

Wilson was the leading architect behind the 

after World War I. His efforts won him the 

 “Birth of a Nation” at the White House, and called Blacks "

At a recent rally in Washington, D.C., 18-year-old Anna Parra-Jordan, a newly-graduated student of the city's 

, was among those passionately calling for Wilson's name to be 

"His legacy is racism!" she told the applauding crowd. "He hurt black people. And when you hurt black people, nothing else that you do matters!"

 urging the school system to change the school's name, and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser says she 

In June, after years of debate, the board of trustees of Princeton University, where Wilson 

 from its prestigious School of Public and International Affairs, as well as a residential college, 

 what the trustees called Wilson's "racist thinking and policies."

'Your name is a pronouncement of your values'

If you're a school whose name is entwined with the Confederacy, that raises even deeper questions about your core identity.

"Your name, whether you're Coca Cola or Google or Washington and Lee, is a pronouncement of your values," says 

 in Lexington, Va., where Robert E. Lee served as college president immediately after the Civil War. 

, asking the university to shed Lee's name and to dissociate from the Confederacy and all it stood for.

"Keeping the name is not neutral," Casey says. "It is sending a message. And in the context today it does just seem to me, are we going to wait until everyone else has done this, or will we be part of the movement, or will we lead? And I think it's already too late for us to lead. I think we've already lost that ground."

But where do you stop? If you drop Lee, what about Washington, who 

Casey says of course, Washington's legacy is problematic. But he agrees with 

: Washington was a founding father. Lee was a traitor to his country.

," Casey says, "and he betrayed that oath to the Constitution of the United States for one reason and one reason only: to protect the institution of slavery."

In Boston, the debate over historic representation has focused lately on two figures cast in bronze: the Emancipation Memorial. It's a copy of the original statue in Washington, D.C., which was erected in 1876 and is also known as the Freedman's Memorial. Both have been the target of protests. 

Wrestling with interpretation of memorial story 

, shows Abraham Lincoln with one arm outstretched,  his other hand holding the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln is looking down at a freed Black man who is kneeling at his feet, with a loincloth draped around his waist and broken shackles around his wrists. The inscription on the pedestal in Boston reads, "A race set free / and the country at peace / Lincoln / Rests from his labors." 

For critics like Boston-area actor and activist 

, who launched a social media campaign to have the statue removed, the message sent by that crouching emancipated man is demeaning. "If he's free," Bullock asked, "why is he still on his knees?"

, that campaign worked. After nearly two hours of public comment, Boston's art commission 

 to take the memorial down. "What I heard today is that it hurts to look at this piece," said commission vice chairperson Ekua Holmes, "and in the Boston landscape, we should not have works that bring shame to any groups of people."

 that the original work in Washington, D.C., was 

paid for with funds donated by freed slaves

, and that when the D.C. statue was dedicated in 1876, before an audience that included President Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass delivered what is considered 

"I actually don't think it should be taken down," says poet and scholar 

Alexander grew up in the Washington, D.C., neighborhood where the original stands. She recalls seeing this statue all the time and learning the context surrounding it from her mother, historian 

Over the years, she has wrestled with how to interpret the story the memorial is telling. "Was that slave rising of his own accord?" Alexander asks. "Was he claiming his own freedom? Was he being put down? Was Lincoln being lifted up as the great white savior, when really the end of slavery was a more complicated affair?"

Alexander proposes an alternative to taking the memorial down: erecting a companion statue of 

 nearby. After all, she says, these memorials offer a chance to contextualize and learn.

"Every day I think about the opportunities," she says. "Historians have a little joke where they say all history is revisionist history. You know, history is always responding to the history that was written before it."

Which means, Alexander says, that this moment gives us the chance to ask crucial questions: What kind of democracy are we? And who did build the country?

"We are revisiting the sacred cows," Alexander says. "We're taking a moment to say, we don't value this. And in fact, valuing this has in part led us to a place where our society is profoundly, profoundly fractured."

Now, she says, as more monuments come down, the question is, what will we put in their place? 

History

Social Issues

Conversations around race and racial justice

Melissa Block

Author

Statues have been taken down; names scrubbed from institutions. The national reckoning over race has reenergized debates over historical figures and the scrutiny goes beyond Confederate monuments. 

Revisiting sacred cows: Which figures from history do we honor, and how?

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox