From The New York Times:
Remove a Confederate Statue? A Tennessee City Did This Instead.
Some residents want the monument removed. In the meantime, Franklin, Tenn., erected a statue of a U.S. Colored Troops soldier, broadening the way the community memorializes the Civil War.
FRANKLIN, Tenn. — For decades, when Hewitt Sawyers drove past the monument of the Confederate soldier standing tall in his city's public square, he felt the weight of slavery's long shadow.
Mr. Sawyers, 73, had attended a segregated school in Franklin, about 20 miles south of Nashville. He read from torn books passed down from the local white high school. The courthouse offered a "colored" water fountain, and the movie theater did not welcome him on the lower floor. As Confederate monuments across the South began to come down after a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., he wanted the 37-foot local statue, known as "Chip," gone, too.
"Chip represented a large part of the reason I was not part of the downtown arena," Mr. Sawyers, a Baptist minister, said. "Every time I went around that square, it was a reminder of what had gone on." (continues)
Remove a Confederate Statue? A Tennessee City Did This Instead.
Some residents want the monument removed. In the meantime, Franklin, Tenn., erected a statue of a U.S. Colored Troops soldier, broadening the way the community memorializes the Civil War.
FRANKLIN, Tenn. — For decades, when Hewitt Sawyers drove past the monument of the Confederate soldier standing tall in his city's public square, he felt the weight of slavery's long shadow.
Mr. Sawyers, 73, had attended a segregated school in Franklin, about 20 miles south of Nashville. He read from torn books passed down from the local white high school. The courthouse offered a "colored" water fountain, and the movie theater did not welcome him on the lower floor. As Confederate monuments across the South began to come down after a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., he wanted the 37-foot local statue, known as "Chip," gone, too.
"Chip represented a large part of the reason I was not part of the downtown arena," Mr. Sawyers, a Baptist minister, said. "Every time I went around that square, it was a reminder of what had gone on." (continues)
I think that installing the U.S. Colored Troops statue was a wonderful idea. It's saddening to see how many confederate monuments remain in our state and how much opposition there is for removing them so I hope this becomes a trend. Regardless of wether confederate monuments are removed or not commemorating achievements of people of color through public monuments is a great thing to do in every community.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually from Franklin and I have seen that statue more times than I can count. I used to have a job in the same public square were the statue was. I'm all for removal and replacement of confederate statues but I do think we need to preserve the statues.
ReplyDeletePreserve them in an interpretive museum, maybe. Or a statue graveyard.
DeleteI agree that it would be important to remember that they were built and why they were torn down, I just worry that if we stored all these confederate statues in one place that it might become an area for hate groups to congregate and spew their propaganda to those who genuinely don't know much and want to learn.
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