Confederate Statue Toppled During George Floyd Riots to Return to Washington
A statue of Albert Pike—a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, who died in 1891—was forcibly removed and vandalized in June 2020 during protests against the death of George Floyd, who died during an arrest by the Minneapolis Police Department that year. The statue was the only outdoor monument to a Confederate leader in Washington.
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The Hill
15 hours ago
- The Hill
Hegseth subverts Congress by ordering racist Confederate monument's return to Arlington
The verbal gymnastics by our Defense secretary whenever he orders a Confederate monument to go back up is truly Olympian. To wit, Secretary Pete Hegseth just ordered the army to refurbish a 1914 Arlington Confederate Monument to the tune of $10 million and restore it by 2027. Hegseth called it a 'reconciliation monument … taken down by woke lemmings.' In his announcement, Hegseth avoids the actual name of the monument, 'The Arlington Confederate Monument.' In fact, nothing in his statement mentions the Confederacy at all. There's a reason for that: Congress passed a law in 2019 preventing the Department of Defense from naming or renaming anything after the Confederacy. Hence, 'reconciliation monument.' I study Confederate commemoration. This structure is one the cruelest, most racist monuments in the country, and its location at the sacred ground of Arlington National Cemetery makes it even more offensive. The monument clearly commemorates the Confederacy and its purpose — chattel slavery. It depicts a tearful, overweight enslaved woman, a 'mammy,' cradling the child of her Confederate enslaver, supporting him as he departs for war. The monument portrays faithful slaves and kind white masters, a historical lie. Slavery featured legal rape, torture and selling husband from wife, child from mother. The monument came down because Congress, with a Republican-controlled Senate, passed a law directing the Pentagon 'to remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America.' President Trump vetoed the $800 billion defense bill because it required the changing of nine base names like Fort Lee and Fort Benning that honored Confederates. Those bases were named during World War I and World War II, when the Army and the American South were segregated and few Black southerners could vote. Congress overturned Trump's veto with a supermajority. To execute that order, Congress created a Naming Commission on which I served as vice chair. We were no 'woke lemmings.' The eight commissioners appointed by Congress and the secretary of Defense included three Republicans, one Democrat, and four retired flag officers. When the commission members visited the Confederate monument in 2022, we were shocked by its overt racist imagery and anti U.S. sentiments. We voted unanimously to recommend removal. Hegseth and neo-Confederate groups argue that the Commission sought to 'erase history.' Not quite. Classes still study the Civil War, slavery, the Confederacy, and Jim Crow. Removing the names of bases named after confederate generals or racist monuments changed who and how we commemorate, our remit from Congress, not history. Hegseth further declares that the monument was done in the spirit of reconciliation. He gets his history grossly wrong. Reunion had already occurred in 1868 when President Andrew Johnson magnanimously granted amnesty for treason to all Confederates. By 1877, all the former rebelling states had full political rights and representation. In 1914, the Arlington Monument celebrated not reconciliation, but the victory of white supremacy. Before 1877, over 2,000 Black men held elective office, including a Black U.S. senator from Mississippi. By 1914, even though Mississippi and South Carolina were majority Black, almost no one of color could vote, much less hold office. Jim Crow triumphed. Reconciliation did not include 9 million African Americans in the South who lived in a racial police state without voting rights enforced by a terror campaign of lynching. In 1914, the NAACP's Crisis magazine counted 55 African Americans lynched. In Louisiana, three Black men were burned alive at the stake. Another mob doused a Texas man with gasoline and placed him in an 'oil-soaked, dry-goods box' and set him on fire. None of the perpetrators were ever brought to justice. Commemoration should inspire us. Who we commemorate should reflect our values. Instead of spending $10 million to restore that monument, we should commemorate the 1,800 United States Colored Troops and thousands of other U.S. Army Civil War soldiers buried in Arlington who helped destroy chattel slavery, freed 4 million men, women and children from human bondage, protected democracy and the saved the United States of America. By ordering the monument back, Hegseth is subverting Congress and the will of the American people. He is telling us that the values of 1914, white supremacy, and Jim Crow are this country's — and the Army's — values. This monument has everything to do with racism and nothing to do with reconciliation. Suggesting otherwise is a perversion of U.S. history and an insult to everyone buried in Arlington Cemetery. Brigadier General Ty Seidule, U.S. Army (Retired) served as the Vice Chair of the Naming Commission. His is the Hinchcliff Professor of History at Hamilton College and his forthcoming book with Connor Williams is A Promise Delivered: Ten American Heroes and the Battle to Rename Our Nation's Military Bases.
New York Times
2 days ago
- New York Times
The Dred Scott Dissent Lincoln Loved
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column that included a brief discussion of the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 case that both invalidated the Missouri Compromise and closed the door to Black citizenship in the United States — until it was effectively overturned by the outcome of the Civil War and officially overturned by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. To write about Dred Scott meant I had to read — that is, reread — Chief Justice Roger Taney's infamous opinion for the court, in which he tried to root his anti-Black constitutional vision in the nation's history. And while I did not write about it in the column, I also read the major dissent in the case, written by Justice Benjamin Curtis. Curtis had a tumultuous time on the court. Nominated by President Millard Fillmore in 1851 to replace Levi Woodbury, the 41-year-old Curtis was the first and only Whig appointee to the court. A Boston-based litigator and one-time state legislator, Curtis came to Washington with a stamp of approval from none other than Daniel Webster. Curtis made an immediate mark on the court with his majority opinion in Cooley v. Board of Wardens, in which he charted a middle course between two opposing views of the Commerce Clause. The case, which concerned a Pennsylvania law that levied a fine on vessels entering the Philadelphia harbor without a local pilot, asked whether the Commerce Clause gave Congress exclusive authority over interstate commerce — precluding any state action whatsoever — or whether states could pass laws affecting interstate commerce as long as they did not conflict with existing federal statutes. Curtis's solution was to split the difference. 'Whatever subjects of this power are in their nature national, or admit only of one uniform system or plan of regulation, may justly be said to be of such a nature as to require exclusive legislation by Congress,' he wrote. But when the subject is 'local and not national' regulation, it 'should be left to the legislation of the states' until 'Congress should find it necessary to exert its power.' Although, as the legal scholar Alison LaCroix notes in 'The Interbellum Constitution,' it would prove difficult to draw the line between the local and the national on questions of commerce, Curtis's opinion would stand with John Marshall's in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) as one of the defining Commerce Clause decisions of the 19th century. It was with this success to his name that Curtis leaped into the dispute over Dred Scott's status as a free man and citizen. He was one of two justices, along with John McLean of Ohio, who wanted to resolve the case in favor of Scott's claim to citizenship and in support of the idea that Congress had the power to regulate slavery in the territories. The majority of the court joined Taney's opinion rejecting Scott's claim to freedom, writing Black Americans out of the national community and invalidating the Missouri Compromise of 1820 because of its attempt to limit the introduction of slavery to the territories. But Curtis's dissent was not some stray afterthought. Just the opposite: It was a comprehensive attack on Taney's theory of the case, and it moved the public debate in the wake of its publication. Both the Republican Party and the antislavery press seized on Curtis's opinion in its attacks on Taney, and Abraham Lincoln, in a speech that summer in Springfield, Ill., relied on the dissent to rebuff Stephen Douglas's view that the Declaration of Independence 'referred to the white race alone.' Curtis begins by taking aim at Taney's decision to rule on Scott's claim to citizenship and the question of the Missouri Compromise. Neither issue, he argued, was 'legitimately' before the court and neither was 'within the scope of the judicial power of the majority of the court' to decide. In Curtis's view, the sole judgment of the court was that 'the case is to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction' because Scott was not a citizen of Missouri. Everything beyond this was not relevant to the case itself and, in Curtis's view, not binding law. You'll note that other political actors picked up on this move. Lincoln, for instance, insisted that the court had not actually settled the question. 'We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous,' he said in Springfield. 'We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it to overrule this.' Having criticized Taney and the majority's decision to decide extraneous questions of constitutional law, Curtis makes the most important argument of his dissent: that Taney is wrong on the facts of citizenship. Asking 'whether any person of African descent, whose ancestors were sold as slaves in the United States, can be a citizen of the United States,' Curtis answered in the affirmative. He pointed out that five states — New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina — recognized free Black Americans as citizens under the Articles of Confederation. He noted that these states also permitted free Blacks to vote, which he viewed as 'decisive evidence of citizenship.' Curtis then asks whether the federal Constitution, which superseded the Articles, deprived either those free Blacks or their descendants of citizenship. He notes that the language, 'a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution,' would appear to be inclusive of free Backs. And so, he concludes, I can find nothing in the Constitution which, proprio vigore [on its own], deprives of their citizenship any class of persons who were citizens of the United States at the time of its adoption, or who should be native-born citizens of any State after its adoption, nor any power enabling Congress to disfranchise persons born on the soil of any State, and entitled to citizenship of such State by its Constitution and laws. And my opinion is that, under the Constitution of the United States, every free person born on the soil of a State, who is a citizen of that State by force of its Constitution or laws, is also a citizen of the United States. The idea that the Constitution was somehow made 'exclusively for the white race,' Curtis writes, was 'not only an assumption not warranted by anything in the Constitution, but contradicted by its opening declaration, that it was ordained and established by the people of the United States, for themselves and their posterity.' As for Taney's claim that the founders did not mean to include Black Americans in the Declaration of Independence, Curtis thought this was wrong as well. My own opinion is that a calm comparison of these assertions of universal abstract truths, and of their own individual opinions and acts, would not leave these men under any reproach of inconsistency; that the great truths they asserted on that solemn occasion, they were ready and anxious to make effectual, wherever a necessary regard to circumstances, which no statesman can disregard without producing more evil than good, would allow; and that it would not be just to them, nor true in itself, to allege that they intended to say that the Creator of all men had endowed the white race, exclusively, with the great natural rights which the Declaration of Independence asserts. Now, Curtis did not hold the expansive view of American citizenship that Republicans would codify into the Constitution after the Civil War with the 14th Amendment. He did not think that birth automatically made one a citizen of the United States; like many jurists of his generation, he thought that state citizenship governed national citizenship. It was his view that 'it is left to each State to determine what free persons, born within its limits, shall be citizens of such State, and thereby be citizens of the United States.' States could deny citizenship to whomever they liked, Curtis argued. States could also determine what rights a person had within their borders. In his view, the only thing the Constitution required, with its 'privileges and immunities' clause, was that states treat the citizens of other states no worse than their own. And yet, even with its highly limited vision of citizenship — one that still allowed for a great deal of exclusion and disenfranchisement — Curtis's dissent still stood out for his strong and explicit repudiation of both racial qualifications for citizenship and racial distinctions in citizenship. 'Color,' he wrote, 'is not a necessary qualification for citizenship under the Constitution of the United States.' I mentioned earlier that Curtis had a tumultuous time on the Supreme Court, and it had everything to do with this dissent. Soon after the court announced its decision according to one source, Curtis sent a copy of his dissent to a Boston newspaper, where it was read and published before the release of the other opinions, including Taney's. The chief justice was infuriated by this and went on to revise his opinion in response to Curtis's dissent. This also began a period of bitter antagonism between the two men, which led to Curtis leaving the court later that year, in September. Benjamin Curtis was neither an abolitionist nor a great egalitarian. He was, in most respects, a man of his time, which makes it all the more striking that he could see a truth that some Americans, in our time, are eager to deny: Our Constitution, and our political community, includes nothing less than the whole people. What I Wrote I haven't sent a newsletter in a few weeks, so here are my two most recent columns. I closed out July with a piece on the antebellum echoes of Vice President JD Vance's vision of American citizenship and American identity: Vance sees the egalitarian ideals of our founding documents but says, as Taney did, that we must look elsewhere for our vision of American citizenship. And that elsewhere is your heritage — your connection to the soil and to the dead. And this week, I wrote about the importance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, whether or not it survives the machinations of this Supreme Court. If by American democracy we mean a pluralistic, multiracial society of political and social equals, then American democracy as we know it began with the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 60 years ago today. I also joined my colleagues on a few episodes of The Opinions podcast: one with Michelle Cottle and Michelle Goldberg, as well as one with Cottle and Steve Rattner. Now Reading Nicole Hemmer on the heterodox 'free speech' movement as a right-wing political project for Boston Review. Samantha Hancox-Li on hierarchy, conservative ideology and sexual abuse for Liberal Currents. Marisa Kabas on the starvation in Gaza for The Handbasket. M.Z. Adnan on Sakir Khader's photos of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank for The New Yorker. Jackson Lears on the legacy of the war on terror for The London Review of Books. Photos of the Week I have two for you this weekend. First, a photo of a derelict hotel on Afton Mountain outside Waynesboro, Va. And second, a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge that I took during a brief stay in New York. Now Eating: Sweet and Spicy Summer Fruit Salad I have no comment other than that this is delicious. A perfect showcase for summer fruit and produce. The recipe comes from New York Times Cooking. Ingredients 2 tablespoons mild-tasting olive oil 1 ½ tablespoons store-bought or homemade chile crisp 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon sugar 1 ½ pounds stone fruit, such as plums, pluots, cherries, nectarines or peaches, or a combination 10 ounces cherry tomatoes Salt ¾ cup basil leaves, lightly packed Directions In a large bowl, whisk together the oil, chile crisp, vinegar and sugar. Pit the stone fruit and cut the larger fruit into ½-inch wedges, then cut each wedge into ½-inch pieces. Halve the cherries, if using. Place the fruit in the vinaigrette bowl. Cut the tomatoes in half, add to the bowl, season with salt and toss very well. Taste and adjust vinaigrette seasonings as desired. (This salad can be made up to a day ahead and stored in an airtight container in the fridge.) When ready to serve, cut or tear the basil into small pieces, add to the bowl and toss everything well to combine.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Stone Mountain Controversy: Georgia moves to Dismiss Confederate Suit Over Slavery Exhibit
A Confederate soldiers group that filed a lawsuit last month to stop a 'truth telling' exhibit from opening at Stone Mountain Park were dealt a blow by Georgia's attorney general. The Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed the lawsuit against the state park, saying officials broke state law by planning an exhibit exploring ties to slavery, segregation, and white supremacy. Georgia law 50-3-1(b)(3) states no publicly owned monument on property owned by the State of Georgia can be relocated, removed, or hidden. Georgia mandate (12-3-192.1) also states the purpose of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association is to 'maintain an appropriate and suitable memory for the Confederacy.' Both passed in 2019. Read More: Confederate Supporters Sue over Slavery and Segregation Exhibit at Stone Mountain With an $11 million budget, allocated by Georgia's General Assembly in 2023, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association enlisted Warner Museums to design a 'truth telling' center. 'The interpretive themes developed for Stone Mountain will explore how the collective memory created by Southerners in response to the real and imagined threats to the very foundation of Southern society, the institution of slavery, by westward expansion, a destructive war, and eventual military defeat, was fertile ground for the development of the Lost Cause movement amidst the social and economic disruptions that followed,' the exhibit proposal says. But their work, with the stated purpose of removing Confederate symbols, contextualizing the Confederacy and attracting new attendees, came under fire from the group. In a surprising move yesterday, Attorney General Chris Carr, who is currently running for governor, has reportedly moved to dismiss three lawsuits filed by Sons of the Confederacy, citing the group does not have legal grounds to sue. Georgia is protected by sovereign immunity — a legal framework that can shield governments from lawsuits. Read More: Where MARTA Runs, Lives were once Sold into Bondage But recent moves by the Trump administration may indicate the struggle over the narrative surrounding Stone Mountain may not be over. In March, Trump signed the Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History executive order, writing: 'It is the policy of my Administration to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing. Museums in our Nation's capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.' The administration announced plans for two statues commemorating the Confederacy to be reinstalled in Washington, D.C., last week. The Stone Mountain truth telling exhibit is scheduled to open by the end of the year. The post Stone Mountain Controversy: Georgia moves to Dismiss Confederate Suit Over Slavery Exhibit appeared first on Capital B News - Atlanta. Solve the daily Crossword
