TAKING DOWN CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS IN PUBLIC SPACES IN AMERICA
Over 2000 Confederate Tributes to White Supremacy on Public Land, from Florida to California. Let’s End It Now. #TakeItDown
CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS ARE SYNONYMOUS WITH THE KU KLUX KLAN
UDC members frequently use the term "Anglo-Saxon" in their discussion of Confederate soldiers and monuments. In 19th century America, "Anglo-Saxonism" was white supremacy with added conceptual elements. According to Karen Cox, history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of "Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture," it celebrates white heroes, mythical or otherwise, and promotes the belief in the superiority of so-called "white civilization."
Perhaps nothing illuminates the UDC's true nature more than its relationship with the Ku Klux Klan. Many commentators have said the UDC simply supported the Klan. That is not true. The UDC during Jim Crow venerated the Klan and elevated it to a nearly mythical status. It dealt in and preserved Klan artifacts and symbology. It even served as a sort of public relations agency for the terrorist group.
Americans Spend Millions on the Confederacy
“Confederate monuments aren’t just heirlooms, the artifacts of a bygone era. Instead, American taxpayers are still heavily investing in these tributes today. We have found that, over the past ten years, taxpayers have directed at least $40 million to Confederate monuments—statues, homes, parks, museums, libraries and cemeteries—and to Confederate heritage organizations.Confederate sites play to the white supremacist imagination,” said Heidi Beirich, who leads the Southern Poverty Law Center’s work tracking hate groups. “They are treated as sacred by white supremacists and represent what this country should be and what it would have been” if the Civil War had not been lost.”
Carry me back to old Virginny,
There’s where the cotton and the corn and taters grow,
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There’s where this old darkey’s heart am long’d to go.
* * *
“Very little has been done to address the legacy of slavery and its meaning in contemporary life.”
That scathing assessment of the nation’s unwillingness to face the truth was issued recently by the Equal Justice Initiative, the Montgomery-based legal advocacy group that in April 2018 opened the first national memorial to victims of lynching.
Excerpted from Southern Poverty Law and Smithsonian
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