Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

One of the most common defenses of Confederate monuments and other forms of memorialization is that they represent history, and that to remove them is to erase or rewrite history. Seidule argues that statues say much more about the person who built them than the person they commemorate. Rather than representing history, Confederate statues and other forms of memorialization are political attempts to advance a particular interpretation of history, which erases the history of anyone who does not fit into the narrative. Statues indicate who has the power to write history.

This is evident from the circumstances in which Confederate monuments were erected. Seidule provides examples showing how the building of a statue or the unveiling of a painting was not simply about honoring the subject. Naming a nearly all-Black elementary school after Robert E. Lee was a way to remind those children of their supposed “inferiority” at an early age, honoring someone who fought to keep millions of Black Americans in bondage. Alexandria, Virginia mandated naming the city’s streets after Confederates only when the courts were entertaining challenges to segregation. Military bases were not named after Confederates until the First World War, deferring to local sensibilities to secure their support.