by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
This past Sunday morning as I was driving through northwest Arkansas I happened to hear a segment on a local National Public Radio (NPR) station about a controversy that was brewing over a Confederate monument at the center of the Bentonville, Arkansas, town square. Two groups of local citizens appear to be busy passing petitions regarding the bronze statue of a Confederate soldier standing atop a large stone pedestal. One group wants to remove the statue from its public perch, and the other petition seeks to preserve it - as history.
As a part of the story, the local NPR affiliate located an individual working at a college in Texas who had written her college thesis on that very statue. The researcher gave an interesting perspective on the piece, noting that it was not erected during the Civil War era, but was paid for and erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy nearly fifty years later as an embellishment to the Jim Crow laws that were on the rise across the South. Some felt that blacks had their heyday during the Reconstruction Era which immediately followed the Civil War, and by the beginning of the twentieth century it was time for southern whites to reassert their dominance in society. Statues honoring service in the Confederacy were subtle ways of reminding blacks of their place on the bottom rung of the social ladder.
The college researcher noted that many of the Confederate monuments across the South had their origins in the Jim Crow period of the early twentieth century. She also noted that while many of the statues might have plaques honoring specific individuals, the statues themselves were generic and often mass-produced. She said that the statue in the Bentonville square was one of many stuck from that same mold that are still on display throughout the south.
The lonely sentinel standing atop the stone pedestal in Bentonville is historical in that it serves to remind us of the bloodiest epoch in our national existence, but beyond its historical significance, it serves as a statement of defiance and intolerance. It is a very real insult to the millions of Americans who are descendants of the human chattel that Confederate soldiers fought to keep shackled in the chains of slavery.
The statue is history, but it is ugly history.
And it is art, albeit mass-produced art like the posters hanging on the walls of my living room. They are art, but they will never be put on the auction block at Sotheby's. These bronze soldiers were made on-the-cheap in northern foundries, they crumple when they are pulled down, and they would be just as at home in Walmart garden centers as they are in public venues.
But perhaps more than anything else, these monuments to a lost cause are propaganda, curiosities placed in public places to tell a story from a particular perspective - and in this case that perspective is intended to be hurtful to a large segment of the public.
We are all the results of history, and its impact on our lives and who we are cannot be denied. But time flows forward and each day we must step bravely into the future. We change, day by day, and we create more history as we go. The world is not static, it changes and evolves.
If a Confederate monument is an important part of your heritage, then by all means honor that and keep it someplace safe - such as in a museum. The place where it does not belong is out in front of people whose ancestors were kept in subjugation by the people those monuments honor. Most Confederate memorials in public settings were erected for intimidation, and today they remain as taunts.
As a nation we must move past that.
Citizen Journalist
This past Sunday morning as I was driving through northwest Arkansas I happened to hear a segment on a local National Public Radio (NPR) station about a controversy that was brewing over a Confederate monument at the center of the Bentonville, Arkansas, town square. Two groups of local citizens appear to be busy passing petitions regarding the bronze statue of a Confederate soldier standing atop a large stone pedestal. One group wants to remove the statue from its public perch, and the other petition seeks to preserve it - as history.
As a part of the story, the local NPR affiliate located an individual working at a college in Texas who had written her college thesis on that very statue. The researcher gave an interesting perspective on the piece, noting that it was not erected during the Civil War era, but was paid for and erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy nearly fifty years later as an embellishment to the Jim Crow laws that were on the rise across the South. Some felt that blacks had their heyday during the Reconstruction Era which immediately followed the Civil War, and by the beginning of the twentieth century it was time for southern whites to reassert their dominance in society. Statues honoring service in the Confederacy were subtle ways of reminding blacks of their place on the bottom rung of the social ladder.
The college researcher noted that many of the Confederate monuments across the South had their origins in the Jim Crow period of the early twentieth century. She also noted that while many of the statues might have plaques honoring specific individuals, the statues themselves were generic and often mass-produced. She said that the statue in the Bentonville square was one of many stuck from that same mold that are still on display throughout the south.
The lonely sentinel standing atop the stone pedestal in Bentonville is historical in that it serves to remind us of the bloodiest epoch in our national existence, but beyond its historical significance, it serves as a statement of defiance and intolerance. It is a very real insult to the millions of Americans who are descendants of the human chattel that Confederate soldiers fought to keep shackled in the chains of slavery.
The statue is history, but it is ugly history.
And it is art, albeit mass-produced art like the posters hanging on the walls of my living room. They are art, but they will never be put on the auction block at Sotheby's. These bronze soldiers were made on-the-cheap in northern foundries, they crumple when they are pulled down, and they would be just as at home in Walmart garden centers as they are in public venues.
But perhaps more than anything else, these monuments to a lost cause are propaganda, curiosities placed in public places to tell a story from a particular perspective - and in this case that perspective is intended to be hurtful to a large segment of the public.
We are all the results of history, and its impact on our lives and who we are cannot be denied. But time flows forward and each day we must step bravely into the future. We change, day by day, and we create more history as we go. The world is not static, it changes and evolves.
If a Confederate monument is an important part of your heritage, then by all means honor that and keep it someplace safe - such as in a museum. The place where it does not belong is out in front of people whose ancestors were kept in subjugation by the people those monuments honor. Most Confederate memorials in public settings were erected for intimidation, and today they remain as taunts.
As a nation we must move past that.
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