Tonight at 6pm EST I will be joining @AshleighWrites and @DinaABailey to talk about the ongoing debate about Civil War/Confederate monuments. You can register at the link below. https://www.gvsu.edu/kutsche/cms-form-edit.htm?formId=EA4BF0BE-D2E5-DE9C-9A540468165BDA1E&fbclid=IwAR2JJl1IREM8_0Qfx4fszic19HGe_Fu8VFIOKr-CKdbsJHKvlV6in7xtbqE

We will focus specifically on this monument, which was dedicated in Allendale Township, Michigan in 1998 as part of the community's 150th anniversary. The monument depicts a Union and Confederate soldier with a young enslaved boy in the middle.

It draws from a number of popular motifs/themes in Civil War memory, most notably, sectional reunion. The monument emphasizes the bravery of white soldiers on both sides and their equal role in ending slavery.

It also depicts African Americans as passive participants...

...in their own liberation. The stance of this boy reminds me of the Emancipation Memorial in D.C. The Allendale monument is also problematic given the year in which it was dedicated. By 1998 our understanding of the war & the process that led to emancipation/freedom had evolved.

The Hollywood movie GLORY hit theaters in 1989. Ken Burns's PBS documentary on the war also deepened our understanding of emancipation and United States Colored Troops at about the same time. The African American Civil War Memory was dedicated in D.C. in 1998.

It would not have been difficult to properly depict the process of emancipation in Allendale. Instead of elevating a Confederate soldier the sculptor should have highlighted the service of Black Union soldiers. It could have been a soldier from the 1st Michigan Colored Infantry.

Instead we have a monument that distorts the history of the Civil War and the Confederacy specifically. The monument moves us further away from appreciating the roles that African Americans, both enslaved and free, played in ending slavery and saving the nation.

See you tonight.