The history of the Civil War and the Confederacy are exactly that—history. America has a complex relationship with its history. Certain parts of it, we revere and treat as legend. Other parts, the grim and ugly ones, we shirk away from and have a harder time telling the truth about. The wonderful thing about history is that it provides us an opportunity to look critically at the past and move forward. The debate about Confederate monuments is certainly about history. But we have to be honest about whether or not this particular part of history is the one we want to hold in high regard. Cities across the country are deciding to remove their Confederate monuments—signaling that the time has come to move on from a period in time that represents slavery, racism and the division of the country. And in Baltimore, early on Wednesday morning, the city took a step forward when its Confederate statues were from around the city.
Statues dedicated to Confederate heroes were swiftly removed across the city in the small hours of Wednesday morning, just days after violence broke out over the removal of a similar monument in neighboring Virginia.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Mayor Catherine Pugh said that given the current political climate, it was important to move “quickly and quietly” as a matter of public safety.
“I thought that there’s enough grandstanding, enough speeches being made,” she said. “Get it done.”
Currently, Baltimore is a predominately black city. This means that for years its black residents were forced to see symbols that are a reminder of the systematic oppression of black people. Moreover, these statues were erected long after the Civil War was over—during the Jim Crow era, another reminder of how black people were (and still are) treated as less than in our society. It’s worth asking why these statues were put up when they were and what the intended message was behind them. Such conversations about the preservation of history need to be had in context. Part of this context includes acknowledging that these monuments which honor individuals who fought to keep blacks enslaved were put up to send a message that folks were, in fact, okay with slavery and racism.
By 3:30 a.m., three of the city’s four monuments had been removed. They included the Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson Monument, a double equestrian statue of the Confederate generals erected in 1948; the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, erected in 1903; and the Roger B. Taney Monument, erected in 1887.
It’s also worth noting that Maryland wasn’t even part of the Confederacy. So these statues really have no place in the city whatsoever.
Ms. Pugh suggested on Monday that the statues might be relocated to Confederate cemeteries elsewhere in the state. (Although Maryland never seceded from the Union during the Civil War, there was popular support for the Confederacy in Baltimore and Southern Maryland, where Confederate soldiers are buried.)
If anything, what we’ve seen in the last few days resulting from Charlottesville is that we’ve been called to action. There is no standing in the middle of the road anymore. There are two sides but they are in no way equal. One side stands for hate, a white ethno-state and the subjugation of groups of people they don’t see as human. The other side rejects all of those things. The Confederates were on the side of the former. We don’t need memorials honoring them. We should teach this history and have these memorials contained in museums so that we can learn from them. But they have absolutely no place in public spaces in a diverse and inclusive America.