What Makes a Memorial?

I wrote this in response to the article “Judge:  Statues are war memorials” that was published in the Daily Progress on Tuesday, April 30th, 2019


Judge Richard E. Moore has determined that the statues of Lee and Jackson are, in fact, war memorials, and as such are protected.  “It does no good,” he wrote, “pretending they are something other than what they actually are.”  As reported on Tuesday it appears that the Judge is dismissive of arguments about, “their intent and placement.”  Yet isn’t it reasonable to assume that the intent of those who commissioned and erected the statues is precisely the issue at hand?  Isn’t a war memorial, by definition, something that’s intended to memorialize a war?  To memorialize something means “to preserve the memory of; to commemorate.”

The earliest Civil War monuments were mostly commemorative markers honoring soldiers who died during the war.  The large statues glorifying the Confederacy’s leaders went up later.  According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the majority of these monuments were built between the 1890s and 1950s, “which matches up exactly with the era of Jim Crow segregation.”  The Jackson and Lee statues which are the center of such controversy here in Charlottesville went up in 1921 and 1924, respectively.

A growing number of historians and other scholars are in agreement that the intention of those who erected such statues was not memorializing the war — at least not entirely.  They were created with such gigantic proportions, and placed in such central locations, in order to intimidate the African American community, which was increasingly demanding — and to some small extent beginning to receive — the full measure of rights due them as citizens.  In other words, these statues were not intended to “preserve the  memory” of the war.  Rather, they were intended to continue it, to strike another blow for the culture of white supremacy the Confederacy seceded from the Union to preserve and, then, fought against the United States to protect.

When you consider the issues of intent and placement the conclusion is “inescapable,” to use Judge Moore’s word — under the guise of being war memorials these statues were intended to serve as weapons.  It does no good pretending they are something other than they actually are.

Rev. Erik Walker Wikstrom


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