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What "progress" looks like at the University of Mississippi: a thread.
On Thursday, the Institutes of Higher Learning--the governing body that oversees all public universities in MS--approved the U of MS's plan to relocate the Confederate monument from the heart of campus to a Confederate cemetery on the edge of campus. https://twitter.com/MSPublicUniv/status/1273620820989038598?s=20
This solution--seemingly the best available, given a state law that prohibits the destruction of Confederate monuments--was the result of years of work by students groups including the @um_naacp, @USASI121, @OleMissASB, @OleMissGSC, and @CampusWorkersMS.
This statue, as @ProfessorTwitty lays out, was erected in 1906, at the height of efforts to rewrite the history of the Civil War in order to honor the Confederate dead and downplay--and implicitly endorse--the cause for which they fought: slavery. https://twitter.com/ProfessorTwitty/status/1273982420585496576?s=20
The initial response on campus to the relocation news was elation--finally! The cemetery is a humble, mostly neglected patch of grass, where the headstones had been displaced & all sense of who was buried where lost over the years. Apparently some US soldiers are among the dead.
Except that, unbeknownst to the university community, this wasn't going to be some humble home for the statue that so many had fought so hard to take down, as @Insurgent_Prof points out. https://twitter.com/Insurgent_Prof/status/1274100245442461696?s=20
This is not the resting place for a shameful statue that needs to be brought as low as it can be brought. This is a new shrine. And, as @jhroll1 points out, it folds all manner of the dead into its narrative of a beautiful lost cause. https://twitter.com/jhroll1/status/1274342323078520839
This is not the plan for which people fought. To say the various constituencies of the university are angry is to understate things: https://twitter.com/OleMissASB/status/1274151395994861568
Recent graduates, whose achievements the university has had no problem capitalizing on in recent years, are upset, including a recent Rhodes scholar ( @queenchansy_)... https://twitter.com/queenchansy_/status/1274069289432231937?s=20
... and the inaugural homecoming king ( @TartyNextDoor) https://twitter.com/TartyNextDoor/status/1274038957047758849?s=20
There is a distinct sense that the university has pulled a fast one on us, saving face while shoring up its support among funders and alumni eager to resist the dismantling of the most prominent symbols of our university's history of, and continued investment in, white supremacy.
Indeed, a prominent local historian is on Facebook claiming that deals have been signed, without fanfare and behind the backs of the university's students, faculty, and staff, to ensure that the statue remains a site of reverence and commemoration. https://twitter.com/ProfessorTwitty/status/1274351477428039680
I was going to say "It's 2020" or something, but this statue has been wrong--morally, historically, pedagogically--since it was put up. It's time for the University of Mississippi to treat it like the embarrassment that it is, not use it to build a shrine to the Confederacy.
An important correction re: the “historian” I mention above. https://twitter.com/darrengrem/status/1274375869532975104?s=21 https://twitter.com/darrengrem/status/1274375869532975104
