Limitations of Statues 0

It’s been a long time since I visited Richmond, Va.

When I was a young ‘un, back in the olden days, though, the whole family would sometimes accompany my father when he had to go there on business, where we would stay at a hotel that is no longer a hotel. I have fond memories of agonizing over which two 35-cent Pocketbooks to buy with the dollar my mother had given me at a department stores which no longer exists and of lunching at a Hot Shoppes cafeteria, along with recollections of the imposing statues of Confederate leaders along Monument Avenue.

Those statues were part and promotion of the myth of the “Lost Cause,” that attempt to paint those persons and the movement they led as something other than what it was, that is, a treasonous rebellion to preserve chattel slavery. (As I have mentioned before, it may have been one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in history.)

Those statues are now gone, all removed within the past two years.

At SLANTblog, F. T. Rea, a native Richmonder, reflects on their removal and the suddenness thereof.

His article is worth the few minutes it will take to read.