from Pennline
Updated Jun 27, 2020; Posted Jun 25, 2020
By Nolan Simmons | nsimmons@pennlive.com
Editor’s note: This story was updated to add a statement from the National Park Service.
Across the country, monuments to Confederate soldiers, slaveholders and others who espoused views now considered repugnant are coming down, some toppled by protesters, others removed by local government leaders.
But in Gettysburg, site of the pivotal Civil War battle, there are few calls to remove the 40 or so Confederate monuments that stand on the battlefield
Furor over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has focused attention on issues of racial inequality, including monuments that glorify those who fought to support the institution of slavery. But the National Park Service said it hasn’t received any complaints about monuments such as the towering Virginia monument, topped by a figure of Robert E. Lee, or statues that memorialize troops from Louisiana, Mississippi and other Confederate states.
Jane Nutter, president of the Gettysburg Black History Museum, thinks that’s entirely appropriate.
“If it’s history and it’s on a battlefield that’s recognizing the history. Not honoring, we’re recognizing what is history, something very pivotal that happened. We can’t ignore that,” said Nutter, whose great-grandfather and great-uncle fought in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War, and whose family owned land off Confederate Avenue in Gettysburg.
“[But] placing a statue of a Confederate in a public space in a town? That’s not where it belongs, because they lost. I mean, they lost and no matter what, they lost.”
But others, such as Scott Hancock, professor of Africana Studies at Gettysburg College, says the monuments are a sign that the Confederacy is still winning.
“Obviously the Union won the military battle,” he said.”But in the 150-plus years since that [battle], in many ways, the Confederacy has won that sort-of mental and cultural battle because so many people have accepted the way in which Confederates, former Confederates, their descendants and supporters rewrote the history of the Civil War and rewrote the history of what the Civil War was about.”
Even if enough concerns were voiced about Gettysburg’s Confederate monuments to warrant a discussion about removing them, the reality is that the monuments are protected by a web of different laws that make getting rid of them a complicated matter, said Jason Martz, acting public affairs officer for the National Park Service.
The untold stories
Hancock sees the monuments as a form of non-verbal discourse: They are testaments not only to the individuals who were memorialized but to their beliefs and ideas. But it’s a one-way conversation that ignores the flaws of the memorialized figures as well as the context of the moments in history when the monuments were placed.
If the monuments remain, he said, that conversation needs to be wider ranging.
“That story doesn’t get told very well, it doesn’t get told on the battlefield,” he said. “The Visitor Center tells that story really well, places slavery and African-Americans right at the center of the story, but the battlefield itself and the monuments do not tell that story.”
Understanding the history of the monuments themselves is as important as understanding the history they memorialize, Hancock said.
Most of the about 40 Confederate monuments — there are more than 1,300 monuments on the battlefield — were erected during the 20th century, many of them during or after the era of the Civil Rights movement, Hancock said.
The South Carolina monument, for instance, was dedicated in July 1963, marking the 100th anniversary of the battle. But one of the main speakers at its dedication was Alabama Gov. George Wallace, known for his staunch segregationist views and support of “Jim Crow” policies.
“You could say the primary motive [for building monuments] is honoring their ancestors, honoring the dead,” Hancock said. “But when you have people like Wallace making a speech and it says ‘The sacredness of the state’s rights’ on the monument, I think we need to be asking, ‘So what was the cause?’ In that context, I think, yeah, it’s the desire to protect a way of life that was built around a racial hierarchy that was central to what was going on [in the South].”
Earl Johnson Jr. says he thinks that the history of Gettysburg can be told without the use of Confederate monuments. Two weeks ago, after delivering a speech on Floyd’s death, he founded Take It Down!, a non-profit dedicated to the removal of Confederate monuments from public spaces.
“Whether it’s on the battlefield or the courthouse steps, these were placed by people who want to celebrate white supremacy — the white supremacy of the Confederacy,” said Johnson, whose father was an attorney for The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
He said his organization has already recruited members from almost all 50 states and is helping organize grassroots efforts to remove Confederate monuments across the country.
“The notion that black Americans and others of goodwill would be forced to pay taxes to enshrine these racist traitors is an extraordinarily American thing,” he said. “We envision an America where no black child has to play under the shadow of a Confederate monument in her public park.”
A teaching opportunity?
Hancock says he would support removing Confederate monuments from Gettysburg if they continue to exist without context, as they do today. But he would rather see the park teach visitors about the history of the monuments and use them as a tool to educate people about the systems of white supremacy the Confederacy fought to protect.
“In Richmond, if you’re driving by that statue, you’re not going to stop and read signs or listen to an interpreter, but people come to the Gettysburg battlefield to learn,” Hancock said. “This is a wonderful opportunity to instruct people about our history in a more comprehensive way.”
Kevin Wagner, history teacher and program chair for social studies at the Carlisle Area School District, uses these representations of difficult moments in history as tools to teach what he calls “hard history.”
In his class, Wagner has students study the history of statues of Abraham Lincoln, including the Emancipation Memorial on display in Washington, D.C. The statue features Lincoln standing over a freed African-American who is kneeling with broken shackles around his wrists.
The statue is currently the focus of a petition that calls for its removal, citing its “degrading racial undertones.” But Wagner says that people would feel differently if they knew the history of the statue itself.
“That statue was paid for entirely by freed slaves with pennies and nickels and dimes,” Wagner said. “There needs to be a contextualization, or let’s add a marker beside it that explains the backstory. Any piece of art, much like a monument, is open to interpretation unless you know what the real story is.”
When studying physical representations of history like monuments, Wagner has his class examine the entire backstory in order to get the fullest understanding possible of that moment in time. Visitors to the Confederate monuments at Gettysburg should do the same, he said.
“You cannot bring one voice forward and suppress another one,” Wagner said. “They both have to equally have a conversation with one another.”
‘Never an easy conversation'
On Friday, the National Park Service issued a statement about Confederate monuments, that says, in part:
“Many commemorative works, including monuments and markers, were specifically authorized by Congress. In other cases, a monument may have preceded the establishment of a park, and thus could be considered a protected park resource and value. In either of these situations, legislation could be required to remove the monument, and the NPS may need to comply with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act before removing a statue/memorial.
“Still other monuments, while lacking legislative authorization, may have existed in parks long enough to qualify as historic features. A key aspect of their historical interest is that they reflect the knowledge, attitudes, and tastes of the people who designed and placed them. Unless directed by legislation, it is the policy of the National Park Service that these works and their inscriptions will not be altered, relocated, obscured, or removed, even when they are deemed inaccurate or incompatible with prevailing present-day values. The director of the National Park Service may make an exception to this policy.
“The NPS will continue to provide historical context and interpretation for all of our sites and monuments in order to reflect a fuller view of past events and the values under which they occurred.”
Martz, the National Park Service spokesman, said the park service and its rangers answer visitors’ questions about the thousands of monuments on Civil War battlefields every day, trying to explain the nuances of history and put the monuments into proper historical context.
To the NPS, the monuments represent the story of the men who fought and died on those battlefields, Martz said.
“It’s every shade of black, every shade of white and every shade of gray in-between,” Martz said. “It’s definitely never an easy conversation, but it’s the necessary conversation to have.”
