Here's the latest on a lawsuit regarding the replacement of a Confederate statue that was damaged last year.
Cameron McWhirter has an extensive story on this in the Wall Street Journal. Cribbing now a little from the article:
The statue's owner—the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which collected $105,000 in insurance money for the piece—plans to repair the base of the monument, replace the statue and move the whole thing to a cemetery away from downtown. The statue's broken pieces now lie in the city's public-works yard.
City officials, who say they have no authority over the statue, applaud the UDC decision. "Once it's down, I think it sends the wrong message to put it back up," said James Festerman, the 69-year-old white mayor of a city that is 42% black. "I don't want industries that might want to move here to think this is a little town still fighting the Civil War."
Couple of things worth commenting on here -- I'm not sure why the UDC is still considered the owner of the statue. I think that basically the city is basically not asserting owner so that the city doesn't have to deal with this, because usually a monument placed on public property becomes public property. Second, I'm not sure why that private preservation group would have standing to challenge the city's -- or the UDC's -- decision. Leaving the legal issues aside, this is an instance in which the UDC is being accused to bowing to political correctness in not wanting to put the statute back in the center of Reidsville. I think that's astonishing that the UDC is now being criticized for being insufficiently staunch in its support of southern heritage.
Three other thoughts, which are inspired by this youtube video prepared by supporters of putting the repaired statue back (or replacing it). First, I think it should be kept in the center of town as a reminder of the era of slavery and Civil War. On this I'm in agreement with the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Perhaps this is the only thing where I agree with them. Probably is, now that I think about this. Second, the music used to accompany the video is the Battle Hymn of the Republic. That's a Northern song. Third, I love the words "no voice" that accompany the video at 5:18 because that's the about amount of voice that African Americans had in North Carolina politics around 1910 when the mounment was placed there. In deciding on keeping a monument we should look to a series of factors, including the meaning at the time and who had a say in its placement, as well as its meaning today and its significance as part of the landscape today. (For more background on this, see Danielle Battaglia's article here.)
Anyway, this is just another sign that monument law continues to rivet our attention! (And some older thoughts here.) The image is of the roundabout in Reidsville where the Confederate statue stood. (And here's another article on the dismissal of the complaint against the NC Department of Transporation and the Department of Cultural Resources. No surprise, obviously.)
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