Reverend Barber's Historical Accuracy

I agree with much of what you say, but I'd like to provide more context and information about the existance of Confederate Monuments in our state. At the outset of the Civil War, many in North Carolina did not want to secede from the Union, and the state was the last to do so. The majority of the Confederate Monuments, and there are 100 in our state including five on public land at the state capital, were erected at least 50 years after the conclusion of the Civil War. They were erected perhaps to honor the bravery of the Confederate soldiers, but more so to celebrate the rise of white supremacy, which had violently suppressed racial fusion governing efforts in our state.

These monuments in our state celebrate only one side of our racial history. What about celebrating the African Americans who helped to write our state constitution during Reconstruction? What about the African American Civil Rights leaders in our state?

The history we have been taught in our schools and on our monuments has been wrong. We must tell the truth so that we can reconcile with our white supremist past and dismantle it as David Neal has eloquently written in a recent piece in the new magazine, Scalawag.

The idea that these monuments honor "good people caught up in fighting for a bad cause" is ahistorical. What history tells us is that most of the Confederate monuments in North Carolina were dedicated in the early 20th century as propaganda to help cement the advances of a resurgent, violent white supremacist movement. Historian Tim Tyson offered a brief glimpse of this history—the actual history of "Silent Sam" and other Confederate monuments—during the outstanding NAACP press conference in Hillsborough last Thursday.

Calls to remove Confederate monuments from our public spaces do not dishonor soldiers and their bravery, because these monuments do not primarily memorialize soldiers. They celebrate and reinforce the systemic, institutionalized oppression of black people. Their location in our most important public, civic spaces send a message. This isn't a mistake; it's what these monuments were intended to do.

Over the next few months, several introductory antiracism workshops will be offered in our area. Dismantling Racism Works will hold its next workshop in Durham in December. Organizing Against Racism will host several workshops in Chapel Hill and Durham between now and November. I encourage my fellow white people especially to consider attending one of these trainings.

A statue of Judge Thomas Ruffin, author of the infamous State v. Mann opinion that authorized unbridled use of disciplinary force by masters upon slaves, would be on the Capitol grounds, but another monument preempted its place, so it stands in the Court of Appeals building across the street. Erected in 1915, it shares in this history. Here's a passage from an essay of mine about the statue that was published in Southern Cultures in 2011 and in Commemoration in America: Essays on Monuments, Memorializaiton, and Memory (U.Va. Press, 2013):

In North Carolina, the creation of what [architectural historian Catherine] Bishir aptly calls "landmarks of power" took place in two phases. From the 1880s to the early 1890s, the focus of the memorial movement shifted from cemeteries, where statues of fallen soldiers spoke a language of grief that transcended sectional loyalties, to public spaces, as dutiful citizens heeded a more partisan call. This period culminated in 1895, in the erection on Union Square of the 75-foot monument to the state's Confederate dead. The second phase came in reaction to an unexpected political development: in 1894 and 1896, the Democrats lost control of the legislature and the governorship to a "Fusion" ticket backed by Populists and Republicans. The response to this embarrassment was swift and sharp. In 1898, the Democrats rushed back into power on a platform of white supremacy, leaving a trail of violence, most notably the deadly coup d'etat in Wilmington. In 1899 the party reclaimed the governorship and enlisted Jim Crow to seal the victory.

Against this backdrop, the second phase of monument-building reflected a "remarkable sense of shared purpose," Bishir observes. "With competing visions of the state's past, present, and future all but silenced in official discourse," she continues, "leaders shared a powerful sense that both in politics and in the culture at large, matters had been returned to their correct alignment." The state's history was reinterpreted as a tapestry of "old family heritage, Anglo-Saxon supremacy, and military and political heroism"; these were the fundamentals that would inspire "a rebirth of southern progress and leadership in the nation."

Here's more about Ruffin and State v. Mann, including a discussion of Eric Muller's extensive research on Ruffin's personal life, which included being a silent partner in a slave trading operation.