Heed Mr. Young’s lead

Calls to remove monuments to Confederate leaders have grown louder since the deadly events in Charlottesville, VA, earlier this month. You may recall how a 32-year-old woman was killed (and 19 other people injured) when a car plowed into a group of counter-protesters at an alt-right and white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

Since then, Charlottesville shrouded two of its Confederate monuments in a show of mourning — eight men with ropes and poles, using a truck and a cherry picker to lift and drop black tarps over the nearly 30-foot monuments.

Response sprouted everywhere. I’ve read about instances of comparatively minor concern, such as graffiti splashed on small memorials in Kansas City. This prompts disgust as whenever any act of vandalism is reported.

Other stories incite stronger reaction. The mayor of Birmingham, AL, ordered a large wood wall to conceal a century-old Confederate monument in a downtown park — despite risk of lawsuit by state authorities.

A Confederate monument was removed (during early morning hours to avoid attention) from Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, CA. Honors for Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in a New York City Church have been removed, the publicity of the decision dwarfing the attention that the church’s Hall of Famous Americans normally attracts.

One of the most dramatic monuments to the Confederacy is called Stone Mountain in northern Georgia. It’s a sort of Confederate Mount Rushmore, with Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis carved into a mountainside. There are those now calling for this masterful piece of art to be destroyed.

That’s why words from Andrew Young, a former mayor and lifelong African-American civil rights activist, should be heeded. Mr. Young is a former Congressman from Georgia. He has served this country as ambassador to the United Nations. He was with Martin Luther King Jr. the day he was assassinated.

Mr. Young says the memorial should stay. Consider just a few of his comments aired on National Public Radio (NPR):

“I’m saying these are kids [today’s activists] who grew up free, and they don’t realize what still enslaves them — and it’s not those monuments.”

“What worries me is that this country will turn to the right so that it’ll be taking down Martin Luther King’s statue next when the racist majority takes over. And I’m saying that a minority can’t be provoking a racist majority [while the minority] is still underemployed, undereducated and dying faster than [the majority]are — that the issue is life and death – not some stupid monument.”

“I would only consider adding to [Stone Mountain]a freedom bell because Martin Luther King said in his speech, ‘Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain [of] Georgia.’ He named that specifically.”

Wise words. This wisdom comes from a statesman who earned respect as part of the civil rights movement when it represented as little as 12% or 13% of the nation’s population. That peaceful movement eventually built a majority of at least 60% for positive change, starting with who could sit down and eat at lunch counters.

Mr. Young says today’s activists should be focused on jobs, not on removing 150-year-old monuments.

Young is not alone. An NPR/NewsHour poll reports 44% of African-Americans believe Confederate memorials should stay, compared to 40% who say they should be removed. In broader reference, six in 10 Americans say the monuments should stay.

I don’t mean to trivialize those who are offended. I realize how activists want to avoid celebrating the leaders who supported slavery. I understand how confronting racism is visually unavoidable if you should live where monuments exist. And, yes, these reminders may seem “in your face” as you drive by to go get a sandwich or to go about your daily business.

But history should be about truth, about how we advance from our mistakes. It’s a work that continues.

Rather than one monument presenting just one side of any story, we should think more upon Mr. Young’s suggestion. Wherever there is a monument to the Confederacy, why not attempt to balance in ways that help promote a more full understanding of the history we’ve endured?

There are no easy solutions to such controversies. How people perceive monuments reveal matters within our hearts.

Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed more than 700 Confederate monuments on public land in the U.S. — with nearly 300 in Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina alone. And the count is growing.

The Confederate controversy isn’t going to go away. More than 500 people showed up for the unveiling of a small monument to “Unknown Alabama Confederate Soldiers” at Confederate Veterans Memorial Park. This was on private land in Brantley, Crenshaw County, about 30 miles north of the Florida line — just 15 days after the woman was killed at Charlottesville.

My prayer is for more responsible leaders, like Andrew Young, and for more of the rest of us to be willing to listen.

SIDEBAR STORY:

We tend to think the world spins only around us. But the United States is not alone in reckoning with public symbols of the past. There are always controversies about how to remember unpleasant histories, prompting varied responses and decisions. Consider these examples:

Ukraine — There once stood 1,320 statues of Lenin in this country and another 1,069 Soviet-era monuments. Most of the statues remained in place until after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Thousands of streets, squares, towns and cities were renamed (oddly enough, the reset included changing “Lenin Street” to “Lennon Street” in one instance, paying homage to the Beatles of rock music fame).

South Africa — A white man bequeathed the land where a major university was constructed, but this man was also involved in the slaughter of thousands of Africans in colonial conquest and the founding of apartheid. A statue of colonist Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town thus became the target of debate in 2015. Student activists, however, refrained from taking the statue down. Instead, students wanted authorities to remove the statue, the biggest symbol of institutionalized racism in that country. Eventually, the mainly white university council voted for its removal.

Germany — So much to say. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989. But a section of the wall was preserved, with paintings by artists from 21 countries creating what is called the longest open air gallery in the world. On the other hand, Adolf Hitler’s underground bunker is marked only by a small sign outside a parking lot. The fear being it might become a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis; a place of violence and shameless celebration of a vulgar history.

Taiwan — This country has its own figure who lost a civil war and whose cause retains support: Chiang Kai-shek, the president of the Republic of China who fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing to the Communists. At that time statues of Chiang were erected all over Taiwan. But as the country transitioned to democracy, many objected since Chiang Kai-shek links Taiwan to its history as a possession of China.

Taiwan opted to move more than 200 statues of Chiang to a park near Chiang’s mausoleum. But thousands more remain elsewhere on the island and proposals to move the rest of them to the park have met resistance. Controversy continues. Just last spring a statue of Chiang in Taipai was found decapitated and splashed with red paint.