As both a @SamSeder guy and A History Guy I'd like to reiterate something he mentioned: monuments are ultimately unreliable representations of what they depict, but they nearly always reveal much about the society and people who put them up. Here's one I've seen more than most
It's a monument to the Confederacy I'm very familiar with- it sits in my county seat in Perry! It was erected in 1908,
and though it claims to be to "Our Confederate Dead" it's odd that it would take 43 years for Houston County to get around to mourning.
In fact, the memorial itself professes to "Ever call to memory 'The Story of the Glory Of the Men Who Wore the Grey'"- and that glory was running high in 1908 when Georgia specifically passed a constitutional amendment to keep black people from voting
Houston County had plenty of black people in it during the war and after it- this monument was erected as a testament to their full and total disenfranchisement under state law. Btw, this particular statue heralds rather than results from the 1915 rebirth of the Klan (also in GA)
Finally, funnily enough, there is already a badly-written and stupid petition to save this monument, though I know of no organized effort to remove it. For the record, this statue does not honor "all who died in the war" and actually does represent slavery, oppression, and racism
"Our heritage" always excludes black people in Georgia. In particular I think about how southern cooking is among the nations tastiest culinary traditions- and how white people had shit to do with it, with every recipe and method perfected over years by black slaves and servants
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