What to do with Confederate monuments

[struggle4progress]

By Editorial Board

... Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky wants to transfer the statue of Jefferson Davis in the state Capitol to a museum. There have been proposals to remove statues of Robert E. Lee (New Orleans), Jefferson Davis (Austin) and Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest (Memphis). Some critics have taken matters into their own hands, spray-painting "Shame" or "Black lives matter" on Confederate monuments ...

Figuring out what to do with Confederate monuments will not be quick or easy. But it's clear that the status quo is not sustainable. African-Americans and others who regard the Confederacy as a particularly vile chapter in their bitter history should not be expected to endure publicly sanctioned symbols that glorify it ...

Taking down monuments to men who made war against their own government to protect slavery is entirely defensible. So is moving them to museums, where they can be presented as historical relics that offer insight into how white Southerners responded to defeat.

Another option is to leave these memorials in place but install informational plaques and other sculptures — of Frederick Douglass, Harriett Tubman, black slaves or the Emancipation Proclamation — that show the old memorials in a less flattering light ...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-monuments-confederate-edit-0718-20150716-story.html

[PoliticAverse]

1. Move them to the Museum of Confederate stuff...

[MADem]

2. Melt them down.

Put up monuments to the Civil Rights movement in their place...

I'd rather look at a statue of Rosa Parks or Medgar Evers or John Lewis any day of the week.

[tblue]

3. It's just as odious as the Isis flag to me.

I don't care what they do with it--throw it in the garbage, send it up to Mars, give it a burial at sea. Just take it away so people who don't want to look at symbols of racism and treason don't have to. It's had its day. Enough

[Kalidurga]

4. If they are in a public park they need to be moved or sledgehammered.

I don't really care which. But, in order to keep some people from getting the vapors I will say moving is probably better. Move them to a museum or if the actual monument was paid for by an individual and installed on public property give it to the descendants or the person who paid for the actual monument. If any are on state capitol grounds move them to a museum or to the person who paid for the monument. This isn't rocket science. Pretending it's complicated is the worst excuse I can think of. If we are supposed to be a democracy having a monument of oppression is creating a hostile environment and is creating intimidation where it doesn't belong (not that it belongs anywhere, but public funded oppression seems unconstitutional to me) should be immediately dealt with. Putting up monuments to replace them that depict more of the whole story seems like a good idea but not where the monument was. I think in those places their should be a sort of a monument a stone with a plaque saying this was the former home of *insert name of monument* and it was removed on the day of *date* and some information about the monument that used to be there.

[ChazInAz]

5. In Budapest

They hit on a treatment for all the old Soviet monuments. Instead of knocking all of them down (Also a sound solution!), the city government moved them to Memento Park, just as a reminder of what can go wrong. There once was an enormous statue of Josef Stalin in the city. During the 1956 Revolution, it was converted into The Boot Monument....only the feet. His right hand is in the National Museum. Good place for it.

[daybranch]

6. Actually we should use them on a teaching moment

Since the revolution itself, poor white and black men and women have been sacrificed fighting to ensure Rich people got to stay rich. We should put a message on each statue commemorating the number who died fighting for slavery while pointing out the vast majority of southerners who fought were poor draftees who fought so the rich slave-owners could live in luxury. We should also point out on every monument that most white southerners have little love for slavery at that time and that The Confederacy began to have trouble finding willing conscripts after the first 2 years of the war. Basically what I am saying here is add the truth to the statues and combat the romanticism and false history on which so much money and effort has been spent by the former slave-owners to whitewash their sins.
Raised in Kentucky, 50 years ago, I learned that romanticized lies- the ones that said there was a popular uprising of people in the south when Lincoln was taking away their State's rights and that exorbitant tariffs were being put into place which would harm most people in the south. They even had me, like the other ignorant people of the south thinking my ancestors had heroically fought and possibly died for the Confederacy. Such bull, I found out later. Today there are 97 monuments in Kentucky glorifying the Confederacy and only 4 supporting the Union. Yet 6 of seven Civil war soldiers from Kentucky fought for the Union. I was ignorant and most of the poor white southerners who claim southern heritage as a rationale for clinging to that evil Confederate are ignorant too. But lets not forget that politics is tribal and beliefs about what your ancestors did must be honored. These ignorant people need to understand that in all likelihood most of their ancestors never willingly fought for the Confederacy. I believe in many cases, this truth will set them free and certainly remove an obligation they have to the false history promoted by the rich.