I just came across some pretty shit-hot hiphop recently…
I have a feeling that’s a response to this infamous cartoon:
Can I just say, I love photography, because it’s the past looking back at you, makes it feel more tangible and real. And I’ve always loved that picture.
Although there was a huge black population there are no (if any) statues of Nat Turner, or any other other African Americans - it is obviously about pointing out who was in power and romanticising the “lost cause” etc. Things obviously didn’t change with the end of the Civil war, ie. bringing in an essentially feudal sharecropping system, jim crow etc… well into recent times.
There is one (1) Union monument in Baltimore. Until this week there were four Confederacy monuments. Baltimore, of course, is south of the Mason-Dixon line, and MD had segregation laws, but was never part of the Confederacy, which I think makes the real intent of these monuments (not just in B’more) even more obvious.
Actually, here is a great example of what can be done with confederate memorials… the Atlanta Cyclorama!
http://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/explore/destinations/atlanta-cyclorama
It was moved from it’s location in Grant Park (next to the Zoo near downtown) up the where the Atlanta History Center is in buckhead. It’s getting the full restoration treatment and be more effectively historicized by the historians and archivists who work at the AHC.
The Washington post has an article on who supplied the statues in the first place…
Union soldiers that decorate hundreds of public spaces across the North. Identical, but for one detail: On the soldier’s belt buckle, the “U.S.” is replaced by a “C.S.” for “Confederate States.”
It turns out that a campaign in the late 19th century to memorialize the Civil War by erecting monuments was not only an attempt to honor Southern soldiers or white supremacy. It was also a remarkably successful bit of marketing sleight of hand in which New England monument companies sold the same statues to towns and citizens groups on both sides of the Civil War divide.
Sylvester McMonkey Mcbean would be proud…
Yes, precisely. If it’s a St. Gaudens, then keep it in a museum somewhere. The rest of em are junk. Grind em up into scrap.
If pressed, they’d probably justify it as “symbolising the common humanity of both North and South” or some such horseshit.
“These are the most beautiful, really the most luxurious statues symbolising the glory of the Union.”
“But we want to memorialise them what fought to keep the n*gra in his place!”
“You didn’t let me finish. Please let me finish. I was going to say, 'symbolising the glory of the Union’s defeat at the hands of the noble Confederate cause. A shame that crooked Lincoln didn’t see the natural order. Sad!”
I haven’t tried to reread the thread and see how you reshaped it. I will just trust you.
I wasn’t here yesterday because I was delivering one of my brilliant, beautiful, and accomplished children to college. I’ve been engaged for the last 20 years in what I egotistically think of as a Great Work of Love; trying to give a child that my culture and society said was defective by birth a fair shot at happiness. Look up “crack baby” and “murder town USA” if you don’t already understand…
In the end my way will triumph, or our species will die. Saving some statues or the swastikas emblazoned on my local library for the sake of history (and, in a few cases, art) won’t change that appreciably. Nonetheless I applaud gleefully anyone who fits out a Jefferson Davis statue with a dress and a sign labeled CUCK and I will stand in the way of anyone who tries to take an axe to that same statue.
I know earnestness is not cool or edgy, and I’m sure I come off as pompous and boring. So be it.
“An’ it hurt no other, do as though wil’t shall be the whole of the law.” Be well, and fight for what matters to you.
Yeah, neither of those is the course of action a sane society would embark on, or ensure are the only two alternatives remaining.
This is Frederick Douglass Square at the University of Maryland. I’m embarrassed to say that I only learned about this statue today, less than two miles from my house and nearly two years after it went up. But as soon as I found out about it, I went to go take a picture.
I think the statue, though it strikes a dynamic pose, is a little small for the dais.
The framing of the picture caused me to do a little double take-- it’s the R Lee Hornbake Library.
I remember reading a message on one of the Berlin U-Bahn cars in regard to banning smoking or something. Totally reasonable. But then I noticed it was dated 1942. Personally, I’d recommend recreating the ban circa 1945 or so even if there wasn’t any real difference,
No irony intended; I hadn’t really noticed the framing but was trying to get the Douglass banner in the background.
Is it just me or does that pose look like he’s casting a Patronus spell?
I have to admit that that reference went right over my head – had to look that up.
