COMMENTARY Taking down Confederate statues is entirely appropriate

President Trump claimed that removing the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va., or any other Confederate monuments, was an attempt to erase history and culture, and suggested it was a slippery slope that would lead to the removal of statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they were slave owners.
Trump is right that there is some shared heritage between Lee and both Washington and Jefferson – all were slave-holding Virginians, and Lee is even related to Martha Custis, George Washington’s wife. But there is a fundamental difference between them – Washington and Jefferson helped create the United States, while Lee fought to break it apart.
Defenders of the statues want to honor the courage of the Confederates. But look at it this way: There were many brave German generals in the world wars, but the French did not erect any memorials to commemorate them, and it’s not because the French forgot their history.
Historical interpretations shift as scholars discover new sources or reinterpret old ones, and historians are often influenced by the world around them. It is often said that history is written by the winners. Although the South lost, southerners initially told the story. But this may actually prove the rule, for Southern resistance ended Reconstruction, and white southerners “redeemed” their state governments, reinstating the power structure that had lost the Civil War. The installation of many of these monuments was a reassertion of power by whites.
Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, in one of the first books about the period, claimed the war was about states rights. The South was resisting an oppressive government, Davis argued, not fighting to preserve slavery. Early chroniclers argued, while slaves might have had to work, most were better off than the free industrial workers of the North, and far better off than their kin in Africa, because of the benevolence of their masters, and their introduction to Christianity.
Later historians, after examining slave records, provided evidence that, far from being grateful for being allowed to live the idyllic plantation life, many slaves resisted their oppression, and what whites perceived as laziness, was a form of resistance to being forced to work as a slave. Historians even questioned the economic value of slavery, arguing that the low costs of slave labor led to economic underdevelopment that stunted the economy of the South for decades, because low wages made it unprofitable to undertake mechanization.
An important part of the culture the president wants us to remember was one in which white women were put on a pedestal, and any relationship with black men would defile their “purity.” For a century after the Civil War, defending the honor of white women led to many lynchings, even for consensual relationships. Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi, was murdered in 1955 for flirting with a white woman. It was not until 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state laws that prohibited marriage between the races.
Trump seems unaware of this history. This is not a culture that should be memorialized.
The construction of monuments must also be contextualized. What Trump fails to recognize or understand is that the purpose of most of Confederate monuments was not to help people remember the past, but to send a message to the local black population. Most were installed in the early 20th century, or in the period following World War II, when racial tensions were high. The monuments in Charlottesville were erected during the 1920s to reassert white supremacy. During World War I, blacks solders were treated as equals in France, where they were fighting and dying to “make the world safe for democracy,” which made their inability to participate in democracy at home even more galling. The confidence instilled by their experience helped them become more assertive – or “uppity,” in the view of the white establishment. This clash of expectations led to brutal riots in places like Chicago and Tulsa, Okla., during which whites rampaged through black neighborhoods. It also coincided with the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which had been essentially dormant since the late 1860s.
A large statue of a man on a horse is a monument, not an historical marker. Such memorials are made to be looked up to, to impress. Lee had no historical attachment to Charlottesville, so putting his statue there made no historical sense. But as the symbolic leader of the “Lost Cause,” a large statue there reflected the feelings of the people in power in the community at the time. Thankfully, however, times change, and we need to change with them. Taking down Confederate statues, which honor people who committed treason by taking up arms against the United States, is entirely appropriate.
It is not erasing history. It is acknowledging that the repression of minorities is no longer a goal to which we aspire.
James is an East Washington resident and has a degree in history and policy from Carnegie Mellon University.