REMOVAL OF STATUES AND MONUMENTS

The removal of statues and monuments (which I will refer to together as statues) is again in the news. I have recently seen articles in the news media about the removal of a confederate statue in Jacksonville FL and one located in Arlington National Cemetery in our nation's capital. In addition in the not far distant past there have been the number of articles and demonstrations with regard to the removal of statue sand other symbols of our past history and citizens in  Charlottesville Virginia, Richmond, Virginia and some number of other locations. These statues and symbols are generally objected to as they represent the confederate cause which was to support a slave society or abuse of other minority populations. Often the proposal is to tear the statue down and destroy it in some manner. Except for the brief euphoria as the statue is torn down and melted or crushed nothing occurs to address the underlying need to educate ourselves on when and how all these statues, state flags with the stars and bars added, promotions of the “lost cause” and other works infested our national conscience. Most of this activity is with regard confederate memorances and were created long after the civil war was over, not by confederate veterans, but by successive generations in the South in the late 1800s and the first third of the 20th century who sought to set up an apartheid society to dominate anyone with dark skin. However, you don't erase many decades of such abusive behavior by just stopping on their symbols. I believe  removals  coupled with museums, parks and  accompanying educational materials would be much more effective.

We need to achieve a catharsis. Slavery was abominable but it goes back to the beginning of recorded history. Slavery was not illegal in the American colonies and many of our founding fathers were slave owners. If we start trying to eliminate memorials to all of the people who owned slaves or benefited from a slave society we will erase our own history and the history of the creation of The United states. The world has evolved. We no longer accept keeping other humans in bondage or indentured servitude. We need to erase that mentality. However, obliterating the symbols and statues of earlier history will do nothing to educate our country about what occurred and why we should be conscious to oppose it wherever it occurs.  In this regard the  relocation and readjustment of the statues can serve an educational purpose of great value.

I believe the country of Hungary has come up with an informative and effective way to address these types of symbols of past efforts to dominate a people. Russia invaded Hungary in 1849 to put down a rebellion against the Habsburg empire. They then left, leaving a lingering bad taste in the Magyar people’s memory. However, they returned in 1956 to restore a Soviet dictatorship that had been overthrown by another rebellion of the Hungarian people that the Russians had imposed after World War 2. The Soviets/Russians were evicted when the Soviet Union fell in 1989. In the interim between World War 2 and 1956 the Soviets had erected innumerable statues to themselves as the liberators of the country from the Nazis and to their governing power. The Hungarian people wanted  to remove those stigmas of the Soviet rule scattered all through their capital of Budapest. The city handled this in a very interesting manner. It established a park  at a location remote from downtown and moved approximately 42 of those statues to that new location. Some of the statues at new location were  spoofs such as the statue that they established of Stalin's boots. They also included a museum that explained the horrors of the invasion by Russia and the excessive attempt to dominate Hungarian society by the Soviet government.

The interesting thing about this approach is the statues are still there to look at, make fun of, and the educational materials are also there including video and other printed signs and information which can inform the Hungarian people and other visitors in successive years ( we are now more than 60 years past the1956 revolution) of what the Soviet/ Russian domination was like and the euphoria which emerged when it was finally rejected. I believe this format creates a much more effective way to deal with the symbols of the Jim Crow era and to educate people what Jim Crow was  about, when it happened and who did it. Simply stomping on it by tearing down statues and melting them or crushing them provides nothing to further educate people. It makes more sense to let them look at the statues with explanations of the reasons for which they were erected and by whom if you  want to have an effect that carries into the future.

I also note that some of these statues may be merely to honor the common soldiers of that town or county without trying to resurrect a lost cause.  I do not find them offensive such that they need removal.  I say that with a picture of my great, great grandfather, a member of the 4th Ohio volunteer cavalry, who enlisted when under age and fought in 22 engagements in the Civil War, looking down on me.

Although most of my comments are about the confederate statues that were erected through much of the South in the Jim Crow era there has also been an effort to eliminate statues, memorials and names of some number of the founding fathers and early leaders of our Republic because they were slave owns or benefited from a slave society or were abusive to some other minority in the country, such as Native Americans. I do not believe it makes any sense to remove those names, memorials and statues . That is just an attempt to rewrite history without a positive, educational affect. I believe suggestions to remove statues of peoples such as Phillip Schuyler, which is apparently by the capital building in Albany, New York, is misplaced. Philip Schuyler was a Major General in the revolutionary army fighting for the independence of our country and was a significant leader in the defeat and capture of the British  army at Saratoga. Even if we wish he had not owned slaves I believe his considerable efforts to benefit the founding of our country still entitle him to our historical thanks including a statue placed in his honor in an appropriate location for the efforts and sacrifices he made in establishing our independence. The same concept is true of our many other founding fathers such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison James Monroe and others. In our recent history, for all his efforts in the depression and during World War 2, Franklin Roosevelt was phenomenally abusive toward Japanese Americans !

Our lack of education on many of these issues is our biggest problem. The statues can become a means by which the population can be more exposed to these aspects of our history.

Obadiah Plainman