The American History Hall of Shame

The sons and daughters of Confederate veterans would have us believe they defend Confederate Civil War monuments to preserve a cherished cultural legacy. But anyone with an ounce of intuition and common sense knows that a defiant, red-faced white person waving the stars and bars and whooping a rebel yell is not announcing that sweet tea is served on the veranda. In their defense of these monuments and the flag under which their heroes fought, these protectors of Southern heritage ignore the historical context in which these monuments were erected and conveniently recall only part of the historical record.

Most of these monuments were built between 1890 and 1920 to underscore the re-imposition of white supremacy in the form of Jim Crow laws and later, in the 1950s and 19660s, during the fight for desegregation and voting rights for African Americans. Their purpose was and is clear — to intimidate the powerless and to embolden the white power structure.

The monuments honor traitors — men who took up arms against the United States in defense of the right to own other human beings and compel their labor as slaves. You can’t honor the historical legacy of the old South without honoring the institution of slavery that made it all possible. And you can’t honor slavery without disrespecting the descendants of slaves and the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died to end that institution.

In his excellent article recently published in Foreign Policy, “What to Do with a Heinous Statue?” Paul Cooper correctly notes, “If there is to be any justice in our conception of memory, the Confederate statues as they are around the United States must be drawn out of public life. They must either be radically recontextualized or they must be removed.”

I’ve got a better idea — let’s remove and recontextualize them! Let’s move the lot of them to a huge new American History Hall of Shame, designed specifically to compel white America to remember that our country arose on land taken by force and deception from Native Americans. And that for hundreds of years the new country enriched itself on the backs of many thousands of slaves.

There could be two major collections in two huge atriums — one for the genocidal wars and abuses waged on Native Americans and a second large hall for the story of slavery and race relations in America. Visitors could stand under the huge statue of General Lee astride his mount and learn how he led the invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863 and rounded up freed African Americans and returned them to their “rightful owners.”

And each town that loses a Confederate monument could be compensated with a memorial for all the African American men, women and children who were lynched in that area without a trial or due process. Nearly 4,000 African Americans are known to have been killed by such white mob justice between 1877 and 1950, so there will be plenty of new monuments to go around. Mississippi (“Goddam!” As Nina Simone put it) alone will have to find room for 576 new monuments. Georgia tops that with 586 lynched lives to its credit, but I haven’t figured out how we’ll move Stone Mountain to the museum.

Or the former site of a Confederate monument could be converted into a local collection of the Hall of Shame, reconstructing the horrors of a race riot or of KKK cross burnings that occurred in that area. The possibilities are as endless as the heartbreaking story of African American history.

Let’s put these monuments in the context they so rightfully deserve. Let’s surround them with the relics, tools and weapons used to kidnap and transport Africans to America. Let’s place them in the context of the brutality and deprivation of slave life where families were torn apart and sold in the marketplace. Let’s have them stand triumphantly amidst photographs of abused slaves, of the “strange fruit” hanging from trees surrounded by a lynch mob, of raped slave mothers holding their masters’ offspring, of civil rights marchers being attacked by dogs and beaten by Billy clubs. I could go on.

Of course, The American History Hall of Shame will never be built. Despite the efforts of historians like the late Howard Zinn to correct the record, many white Americans (and those hoping to make America white, er, great again) prefer the sanitized version of American history doled out in most of our nation’s schools. In this version of American history there was no slave trade, no Trail of Tears, no Battle of Wounded Knee, no denial of justice during the Jim Crow era, and so on. But the full story of our history has a large dark side replete with racism, genocide, injustice, and class warfare. It has long chapters on empire building and imperial wars. On the continuing resistance to women’s rights and equality in the workplace. On the opposition to equal protection of the law for gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.

The only way to correct the story found in my imaginary American History Hall of Shame is to extend the belief of our Founders that “all men are created equal” from their understanding of that phrase (white, male land owners) to people of all races, classes, genders, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. And it’s that effort, the fight to extend the American dream to every American that is resisted so desperately not just by the Confederate Monument defenders, but by the entire alt-right and those who tolerate their views in our political arena.

If all people are endowed equally with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we must learn to welcome everyone into the American family except the intolerant. That’s the one unforgivable sin in a free society. Let’s take a step toward tolerance. Let’s no longer pay homage to a shameful aspect of our history that we must never forget, but that can no longer be honored. Take the monuments down and tell the full story behind their intimidating erection.

Peace.

an m�����

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