Saturday, August 26, 2017

A BIT MORE ON CONFEDERATE STATUES

Very few statues and monuments were erected during the rest of 19th Century after the civil war.

General Robert E Lee stated that none should be erected.

But there have been two spikes of activity: the first when African-Americans were being disenfranchised; the second when African-Americans were demanding their civil rights.

And not forgetting that most are plastic and sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

BRING THEM DOWN!

There are two distinct spikes: one around the turn of the 20th century, and one during the height of the civil rights movement.

The first spike

The first spike is around 1900. That's 35 years after the end of the Civil War.

When the war ended, relatively few monuments went up in the South. The economy and social order were just too devastated. But after money was raised, sponsoring groups promoted the "Lost Cause" ideology -- the belief that states' rights, not slavery, was the Confederacy's principal cause.

By 1900, many states were implementing Jim Crow laws, meant to disenfranchise newly freed African-Americans and prevent integration.

It's in this climate that cities and states ramped up their construction of Confederate symbols.

The second spike

The second, albeit smaller, spike is in the mid-1950s and 1960s. Change was in the air. Brown v. Board of Education. The Civil Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act. As the SPLC put it in its report, "The civil rights movement led to a backlash among segregationists."

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