There's a massive Confederate monument on the South Side of Chicago. I've been thinking about it a lot the last few days as monuments to hate have been righteously and unceremoniously toppled all over the country. 1/17

Confederate Mound is enormous, two acres in size. There's a 30-foot obelisk topped with a statue. Bas-reliefs and plaques galore. Cannons with stacks of cannonballs. A flagpole, with an American flag. 2/17

It flies under the radar because it's not just a monument, it's a mass grave. Plaques around the base of the obelisk list 4,275 Confederate dead, but the true number may be 6,000 or more. I'm doubtless distantly related to some of them. 3/17

There are a small number of Union soldiers with their own markers, but the Confederates are unmarked. 4/17

These were prisoners of war at Camp Douglas, and they died under miserable conditions. Their bodies were first buried near the camp, or in the city cemetery that is now Lincoln Park. They were moved en masse in the late 1860s after the federal government purchased this plot. 5/17

This mass grave awkwardly shares Oak Woods Cemetery with such notable Black people as Ida B. Wells, Thomas Dorsey, John H. Johnson, Jesse Owens, Eugene Sawyer, Harold Washington, and Nancy Green (the original face of the soon-to-disappear Aunt Jemima brand). 6/17

I think graves and burial grounds are owed a special measure of respect, no matter how one feels about those buried. So I've long thought that this one should remain, even as others in public parks and government buildings come down. 7/17

But as many are now learning, our history is darker than we're taught. And it didn't take long to find that that's the case with this monument. Pages 76-87 of this report lay it out in much more detail than this modern sign.  https://www.cem.va.gov/CEM/publications/NCA_Fed_Stewardship_Confed_Dead.pdf 8/17

When the federal government buried the dead Confederate soldiers here in the 1860s, they left the site unmarked. They literally did the very least they could do, and left it at that. 9/17

The obelisk wasn't installed until the 1890s, by which time white supremacy had firmly reasserted itself. It was championed by the United Confederate Veterans, an organization that peddled the revisionist myth of the Lost Cause that has done so much to poison this country. 10/17

While the sculptors who created the sad Confederate soldier perched at the top and the bas-reliefs on the sides are lost to history, the overall design and fundraising were led by Chicago-based ex-Confederate, John C. Underwood. 11/17

100,000 people were estimated to be in attendance at the three-hour dedication in 1895. Among them was President Grover Cleveland, at the very least not a believer in racial equality. The South might have lost the Civil War, but its ideology was already back on top. 12/17

After dedication, the monument fell into disrepair due to the swampy character of the site. It wasn't until 1902 that the federal government stepped in to improve drainage and begin performing regular maintenance. 13/17

The bronze plaques listing those buried were not part of the original monument. It's telling that they were not installed until 1911, under the auspices of the federal Commission for Marking Graves of Confederate Dead. 14/17

The United Confederate Veterans installed a monument to the Lost Cause, then left it to the government to maintain and memorialize those actually interred there. Of course, it's more complicated than that, as this plaque suggests. 15/17

Off to the side stands this cenotaph, a memorial to the southerners who opposed the Confederacy. There were obviously people who objected to this monument even when it was installed, and who felt the need to complicate the story. 16/17

What of this is a memorial to soldiers who died wretchedly after fighting on the wrong side of history? And what is a monument to the Lost Cause, built by northern and southern whites reunited by their belief in white supremacy? It's a question worth asking. 17/17