Why Monuments Matter

by Ariela J. Gross

Ariela Gross is co-author, with Alejandro de la Fuente, of Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana. This powerful book tells the story of free people of color who used the law to claim citizenship and freedom for themselves and their loved ones. It is one of a selection of books on race, protests, and policing that Cambridge University Press has made available for free until July 12th : https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/journals/protests-policing-and-race

Monuments have been coming down all over the world, from Louisville, Kentucky to Bristol, England. Protestors tore President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis from his pedestal in Richmond, Virginia, while Edward Colston, a seventeenth-century slave trader, lies at the bottom of Bristol Harbor. A Virginia court just blocked the removal of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s statue from Richmond’s Monument Avenue for ten days.

What does the death of George Floyd have to do with Edward Colston? Why should protestors against police brutality today be tearing down or defacing monuments to Confederate generals, slave traders, and even the Belgian King Leopold, who terrorized and colonized Congo?

History matters. This has never been clearer than it is right now, when marchers for racial justice chant, “The system ain’t broke, it was built this way.” The Black Lives Matter protestors recognize that George Floyd’s death is not an anomaly, but part of a long history of brutalizing Black bodies that began in slavery. Although, as Presidential adviser Stephen Miller suggests, “a statue never prevented someone from getting an education,” the history that Confederate statues represent has had a painful legacy in the segregated and unequal education many African Americans experience to this day.

Read entire article at Cambridge University Press