wtf do we do with this sh*t?
Brief thoughts from the National Trust's historic preservation conference
I took a feminist queer walking tour of the French Quarter in New Orleans as a field study at the National Trust’s historic preservation conference. We stopped outside the court building on Royal Street and folded into ourselves on the steps— our first break for our feet after an hour and a half.
At first I didn’t even notice the empty plinth. I was looking at the porches on the buildings across the street and the people walking by gazing at us curiously as we gazed back, more or less in a hot but still tuned-in daze.
Then we craned our necks to notice what was left of the White statue, a confederate monument that was taken down in 2020. “Ahh,” we all said. But where did it go? Just inside the building. “Ahhh,” we all said again, in a different, more disappointed, key. But this simple tonal shift interested me!
Christina Simko wrote an article (published in 2020 around the same time as this monument was moved) with my advisor, David Cunningham, and Nicole Fox on what happens to commemorative landscapes depending on the choice to remove, move, or decontextualize contested monuments.1
They focus on three case studies to outline a typology: essentially where the monument was relocated or completely removed, public discourse around the monument cricketed. Complete absence of coverage post-removal and, in the case of the St. Louis monument, no real way to know the monument had ever been there unless you’d known before. I’ll say more on this in a second.
Modification of the monument, like adding a contextualizing plaque, amplified the monument and continued discourse. In the case of a confederate state on University of Mississippi’s campus, rhetoric and the chosen framing narrative in this choice seem to complicate the intentions versus impact of this action. The symbol itself still has a visible and controversial presence/meaning, but the recontextualization effort created momentum for a larger campaign to address other spaces and symbols related to white supremacy.
And joint relocation and modification, like moving the Davis statue on UT Austin’s campus to a museum, allowed for the monument to be repositioned into a more intentional narrative and discourse. Of the three actions and outcomes, they find that repositioning allowed for the greatest transformation of discourse and community impact, leading to wider conversations and the mobilization of further efforts.
I talk about this paper frequently when I have conversations about confederate monuments with friends, and especially when explaining the nuance and development in my personal opinion on what to do with them.
I haven’t advocated for straight removal of confederate monuments in a long time. Though, I do think that action shouldn’t be off the table. As I said before, in St. Louis, you’d never know there was a confederate monument if you didn’t know before. I’d been running past where there used to a be a concrete path leading up to the statue for months before I found out that’s where it was. There apparently wasn't much of a debate about what to do with the monument and no real complaint about its disappearance either. Now people picnic and kick balls on a field where it used to be.
This absence reminds me of the question, “If a tree falls, but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
I feel complicated about silence. It feels too easy, too generous, too forgiving. I want there to be an acknowledgment of what stood before— why it was there, who put it up, and why it stood for so long. I want an admission of guilt. I want an apology. Even if it’s a plaque no one really looks at.
The plaque no one really looks at is why I’m not happy with leaving a monument up and adding to it either. Though, doing something about a monument is better than doing nothing, in my opinion. In the later days of my campaigning to rename Wade Hampton High School, when it was clear no one with any ounce of political power was willing to claim authority over the name, I suggested adding a contextualization plaque. I thought this was super reasonable, do-able, and as close to middle-ground as we could get in this debate. But no one bit, and I was still called radical. *facepalm*
Simko et al don’t have a case study that considers joint removal and contextualization. I can’t think of a place that has done this off the top of my head (—definitely write me in the comments if you can.) There are other places where monuments have been removed, but the plinth stays. (The Colston statue in Bristol seems to be the biggest example of this.) In some ways, I think this says as much as a plaque might. And maybe it does better at taking away the power from the monument because it draws less attention to itself. I mean, I said it earlier, I didn’t even register the empty plinth on our walking tour until it was pointed out to me. It just slipped into the background.
I go back and forth between wanting community members to be allowed to go about their day-to-day lives without being bombarded by white supremacist iconography— I mean, I know how it felt for me as a Black 16 year old going to a high school every day named after and graphically symbolizing a white supremacist (I literally would beg my mom to not make me get out of the car in the morning.)— and wanting to never be able to forget the intended violence in public symbols.
So, I’m not sure. I wasn’t disappointed by the choice to move the NOLA statue inside the building like some of the others on the tour. Someone made a comment along the lines of, “Of course they’d move it inside to be more protected.” And I hear that, but I’d be interested in hearing more about the decision and the community’s response in 2020 and what they think about it now, if they even think about it. I wonder if the choice to move it inside has followed the typology laid out by Simko et al, leading to more dialogue and some kind of community transformation.
We didn’t get to go inside, so I don’t know if they’ve just thrown it in a corner, but the short article I read on it says the court administrator promised a short contextual plaque on the “accomplishments” and “legacy” of the segregationist judge. Who knows if the plaque does any justice to the need to remove/move/recontextualize the monument in the first place, but considering we were on a tour that intentionally took us there to make this point, so I assume it still matters to the community and that locals do think about it. But neither transformation nor redress/reparation happens with the addition of a plaque or the continuation of conversation alone.
It was interesting to have this mini-conversation at a conference for historic preservation. There were other moments that suggested preservationists taking very different sides on this conversation: either very pro-monument in the name of preserving “history” or very anti-monument in the name of anti-racism.
In a discussion over lunch with my new preservation friends, I talked about how regardless of the chosen action (to remove, move, or (re)contextualize), I’d like to see more traditions, gatherings, educational programming, etc that happens at these sites and around these monuments. We have a duty to not let silence, absence, straight-up-propaganda, and/or a general lack of knowledge be the defining features of our symbolic landscapes and the memories of our difficult, contested, and unrepaired pasts. I’ve said it before: we have a right to our history and we deserve to have a stake in how we participate in it.
I hate to sound like a centrist (because I really am not), but I do think there’s room for nuance and negotiation. I do not think there is room for neutrality— we should stand on the right side of history and that is with anti-racist intention and concern for justice/repair. At the root of my argument against confederate monuments has always been giving the community agency to decide how best to handle monuments and memory. (In South Carolina, we still can’t do this because of the Heritage Act.) What community stories do we want to tell and what values and identity do we want to showcase to the world? It’s not a one size-fits-all kind of thing, and I don’t want it to be. But we also have to be good stewards of our community’s memory and continue seeking acknowledgment and repair to harms our communities have inflicted.
I’d love to know: How have your thoughts evolved on contested monuments/symbols and what to do with them? How do you reckon with difficult pasts in your community’s history/identity? What does it mean to be a good steward of our community’s memory? Wtf should we do with this sh*t?
Christina Simko, David Cunningham, Nicole Fox, Contesting Commemorative Landscapes: Confederate Monuments and Trajectories of Change, Social Problems, Volume 69, Issue 3, August 2022, Pages 591–611, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa067
Would Furman Hall be an example of removal and contextualization? Jame C' name and stained glass window came off and a plaque talks about why it's renamed for the Furman family (meaning descendants who renounced their ancestors' misdeeds) and inclusively-oriented members of the Furman community.