As much as I am all for inclusive art, I would have not melted that statue and instead put it in a museum as a memorial to who the south once thought of as a hero. Maybe add some context like how he shouldn’t be celebrated, but still provide historical context as to his person and insight into how people back then thought of him.
That would be one huge museum of equally bad similarly looking statues. No need to preserve them all, because there are so many of them, a couple will do.
Yeah, the caption should be segregation now, segregation forever. And if we are legally forced to stop scratching, we will make their place clear by building statues to the people that fought to keep them slaves when they get their rights from the federal government. The statues were about sending a message to those that believed segregation was done. The stairs being melted is the right move to send a message to those that built them.
Unless the statue was erected by George Wallace, that caption is irrelevant. Put a caption of Lee’s written words:
There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence.
This passage is commonly cut off after the full sentence before you get the full context in which Lee actually cares about how bad slavery is for white people and how slavery was good for the enslaved.
As much as I am all for inclusive art, I would have not melted that statue and instead put it in a museum as a memorial to who the south once thought of as a hero. Maybe add some context like how he shouldn’t be celebrated, but still provide historical context as to his person and insight into how people back then thought of him.
Don’t worry, it’s the south. They have about a thousand more statues of that traitor at least.
Plus everyone and their cousin-sister has the middle name Lee.
Why? They’re a dime a dozen and were put up in the 1900s largely due to the Daughters of the Confederacy and to reinforce Jim Crow laws.
They aren’t really worth preserving. A picture can be taken to explain how awful these things are.
That would be one huge museum of equally bad similarly looking statues. No need to preserve them all, because there are so many of them, a couple will do.
That doesn’t sound like a fun place. Hey honey want to take the kids to the museum of poorly made statues of hate today?
Yeah, the caption should be segregation now, segregation forever. And if we are legally forced to stop scratching, we will make their place clear by building statues to the people that fought to keep them slaves when they get their rights from the federal government. The statues were about sending a message to those that believed segregation was done. The stairs being melted is the right move to send a message to those that built them.
Unless the statue was erected by George Wallace, that caption is irrelevant. Put a caption of Lee’s written words:
This passage is commonly cut off after the full sentence before you get the full context in which Lee actually cares about how bad slavery is for white people and how slavery was good for the enslaved.