Sue Lani Madsen: Confederate statues should stay – with historical context, warts and all
Should they stay or should they go?
Tearing down statues is a perverse sort of idolatry, imbuing bronze and stone with metaphysical power. But as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after the violence in Charlottesville, “I want us to have to look at those names and recognize what they did and to be able to tell our kids what they did, and for them to have a sense of their own history.”
Hers is an academic reaction.
The antebellum South, land of Dixie, is foreign to me. A new, outside-my-bubble friend, Jackie Rose, called the intentions behind Confederate monuments in the South erected during Jim Crow a slap in the face to the civil rights movement.
She said, “as a black American these things chill me to the bone; grownups in my childhood lived through and spoke of lynching times … try to imagine, for a moment, what your visceral reaction would be to these (monuments); I felt, I assure you, the same gut-chill walking through Dachau. These things evoke a darkening of the human spirit.”
Rose would prefer to see Jim Crow-era statues removed to a museum setting. It’s a gut reaction.
Banishment isn’t only a problem for Confederate generals. In 2015, a group of black pastors objected to a bust in the publicly funded Smithsonian Institution. It honors a historical figure described by the pastors as someone “who found common cause with the racial agenda of the Ku Klux Klan.” They suggest “a prestigious institution like the National Portrait Gallery should have higher standards and subject its honorees to higher scrutiny.”
Their guts say Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, is unfit to be included in the “Struggle for Justice” exhibit for her emphasis on aborting “undesirables.” Stay or go?
The plaque on a statue in downtown Spokane erected to the memory of a beloved son describes his heroic death “fighting savages” in Samoa to protect a wounded comrade. Jennie Willardson, of Spokane Valley, in defense of keeping history, wrote in a social media post that “Lt. (John R.) Monaghan was fighting the Samoans in a war to expand the American Empire at the expense of Samoan sovereignty … Should we take Lt. Monaghan down to avoid discomforting or leave him up to show the human cost of the wars for American Empire?”
Two statues stand near the INB Performing Arts Center alongside the Spokane River. The Michael P. Anderson Memorial depicts another beloved son on one knee, setting a dove free. The intent is to honor a tragic death, the artwork is beautiful and astronauts have to pass strict background checks. The Anderson statue is safe.
Nearby, the two-figure piece titled “The Call and the Challenge” commemorates the centennial of Sacred Heart Medical Center. The laborer with the wheelbarrow is every man. But what about Mother Joseph? An architect, builder and visionary leader, she was also a member of a religious order with a difficult record in the era of Indian boarding schools.
Mother Joseph is one of only nine female figures included in the 100 on display in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall – two statues for each state. Washington’s second statue is Dr. Marcus Whitman. Difficult doesn’t begin to describe his complicated history with Native American country, but he did play a major role in developing the Oregon Trail, bringing settlers to Washington Territory to make a state. Do the statues come down?
Judging public monuments requires more than a gut reaction. Art, beauty and craftsmanship matter. History matters. Civil society needs tangible objects highlighting events and persons significant in bending the arc of history, and sometimes discomforting our comfortable bubbles.
Intent matters, but is easily forgotten without the backstory. Monuments need appropriate historical context and signage, telling history, warts and all.
Some day when I visit the South, I need to walk by a Jim Crow-era statue in the public square and feel that same gut chill Jackie Rose experienced walking through Dachau. We need to face our complex history filled with imperfect people, doing good deeds and bad, but all laying a part of the path that led to now.
Should they stay or should they go? They should stay.