Jo Freeman Reviews: No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice
The 1960s civil rights movement wasn’t the first time black Southerners opposed these memorials, but it was more visible. Cox asserts that the formerly enslaved and their descendants saw the monuments for what they were, representations of White Supremacy, or Anglo-Saxon Supremacy as it was sometimes called. This was a core belief of the Lost Cause. Blacks feared to speak out against them, other than in the Northern press, but they could subtly desecrate them – and did.
Right: During the Meredith Mississippi March in June 1966 protestors took over the local Civil War monuments. Mississippi officials surrounded this one in Belzoni with prisoners from Parchman Penitentiary, forcing the rally to move to the courthouse steps.
Photo ©Jo Freeman 1966 https://www.jofreeman.com/photos/meredith.html
As the 1965 Voting Rights Act increased the number of black voters and elected officials, opposition to these monuments became more public. Municipalities that wanted to take them down faced a backlash from state legislatures which passed “heritage preservation” laws making it difficult to impossible to do so. This sometimes led members of the public, usually Southern black students, to take matters into their own hands. Toppling a few monuments persuaded some states and cities to move them to “safe” places before they hit the ground.
The movement for removal is more contemporary, peaking in 2017 and 2020. In May 2020, Black Lives Matter captured the Robert E. Lee statue along Monument Row in Richmond, VA, spraying it with graffiti and partying around it for several days. The UDC headquarters was set on fire. Events like these convinced the author that there is No Common Ground over what to do about Confederate monuments and the competing versions of history that they represent.
Copyright © 2021 by Jo Freeman for SeniorWomen.com
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