[Peace] NYT: Few in St. Louis Knew Confederate Memorial Existed. Now, Many Want It Gone.

[Robert Naiman]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/st-louis-confederate-monuments-south.html

Few in St. Louis Knew Confederate Memorial Existed. Now, Many Want It Gone.
By JULIE BOSMAN
MAY 26, 2017

ST. LOUIS — The angry, divisive fight over public symbols of the
Confederacy has swept through Columbia, S.C., Birmingham, Ala., and New
Orleans. This week, the debate made its way some 600 miles north, up the
Mississippi River, to St. Louis, the home of a Confederate memorial many
residents did not know was in their midst.

Here in a graceful public park stands this city’s own grand monument to the
Confederacy, a 32-foot-tall granite column adorned with an angel and bronze
sculpture of a stoic group of figures. It rises in a thicket of trees, next
to a trail teeming with runners, bicyclists and wanderers.

Many residents said that until very recently, they had no idea that the
103-year-old memorial honored Confederate soldiers.

“Not till they started making all that hoopla over it,” said Larry Randall,
54, who was setting off on a bike ride one afternoon this week in front of
the memorial. “I’ve been coming out here for years. I never paid it no
mind.”

Mr. Randall, who is African-American, said he understood why some people
are now calling for it to be removed. “If it’s causing problems, then they
should get rid of it. Or maybe just polish the words off,” he said. “I
could give a hoot.”

This monument has emerged from obscurity in the last few weeks, as four
prominent memorials to the Confederacy and its aftermath in New Orleans
were pulled down amid protests. The debate has rippled across the South. On
Wednesday, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama signed a measure that blocked the
“relocation, removal, alteration, renaming or other disturbance” of
“architecturally significant” monuments that have been on public property
for at least 40 years. In Hampton, Ga., a museum said on its Facebook page
that it would close next week after a county official asked that it remove
all Confederate flags from its building.

Here, a vocal group of activists has turned its attention to this city’s
Confederate Memorial, arguing that it, too, should be carted away, out of
its prominent place in Forest Park, one of the most beloved public spaces
in St. Louis.

The antimonument activists have a powerful lineup of city officials on
their side, including Lyda Krewson, the newly elected mayor of St. Louis,
who said that she favored removing the Confederate Memorial from the park
permanently.

“My own opinion is that it is hurtful,” Ms. Krewson, who is white, said in
an interview on Thursday. “It reveres something that, you know, we’re not
proud of.”

Tishaura O. Jones, the city treasurer, started a GoFundMe page
<https://www.gofundme.com/forest-park-monument> to raise money for the
monument’s removal. In about a week, she has gathered more than $11,000.

She passes the memorial during her weekly drive to the grocery store,
usually with her 9-year-old son in tow. “What I’m trying to do is set the
record straight,” she said. “The Confederates, in my opinion, were
traitors. And in this country, we honor patriots.”

Other St. Louisans are resisting the move, arguing that removing it would
be tantamount to blotting out the history of the Civil War. Some have said
that the enormous monument is too heavy and expensive to move, particularly
when it doesn’t have an obvious new home. Still others say that the
monument has rarely attracted attention for more than a century — why
should St. Louis be caught up in a debate that, in their view, belongs to
the Deep South?

“My first choice would be that everyone forget it was there, like before,”
said George Stair, 77, who paused at the monument on an evening walk with
his wife, Jane Yu, who agreed that it should stay.

Mr. Stair gazed at the sculpture. “I feel like it’s O.K. to honor ordinary
soldiers,” he said. “People went to Vietnam even though they didn’t agree
with it.”

Missouri, once a slave state, was torn between North and South during the
Civil War, a border state where families and neighbors sympathized with
warring sides and were often pitted against one another.

“It was a divided state, which explains why we have so many of these
problems here today,” said Mark L. Trout, the executive director of the
Missouri Civil War Museum outside St. Louis. (Mr. Trout said his museum
would be happy to accept the memorial as a gift, though he did not have a
place for it to be displayed at the moment.)

Divisions over the Confederate Memorial turned especially sharp this week,
when demonstrators calling for its removal gathered in the park on Tuesday
evening. They were joined by a handful of counter-protesters, men who told
reporters that they were from outside St. Louis and who carried a
Confederate flag.

One opponent of the statue, Amy Maxwell, said that people from both groups
were carrying handguns, and at one point someone snatched the Confederate
flag and ran off, instigating a chase from the pro-monument group.

Sometime during the night, the monument was spray-painted in blue with the
phrases “This is treason” and “Black lives matter.” Workers were seen on
Wednesday morning removing the words.

Out for a run on Wednesday, Ms. Maxwell, a 22-year-old student at Saint
Louis University, paused in front of the memorial, stepped around the metal
barriers and spat on it.

Ms. Maxwell, who is white, said she planned to demonstrate every week until
it is removed. “It would be nice to have some black abolitionists
memorialized in this city.”

Dorothy Bohnenkamp, 51, a psychotherapist who was born and raised in St.
Louis, was taking her usual run in the park on Wednesday, directly past the
memorial.

She said she had rarely given the monument a thought until recently, when
it appeared in the news, and was not cheering for its removal.

“Personally, I don’t see where it represents anything specifically related
to racism,” Ms. Bohnenkamp, who is black, said. “So they take it down. What
does that represent? It’s still the same history.”

Ms. Krewson, the mayor, said she would like to act quickly, drawing up a
plan for removal within the next three weeks. She has seen cost estimates
of close to $130,000, and envisions using a mix of public and private money
for the project.

For now, the memorial has become an object of curiosity in the park.
Passers-by stopped to inspect the monument, snapped cellphone pictures and
traced their fingers over the worn and stained surface.

Ayana Parker, 12, was exercising with her mother, Shalonda Bolden, in the
park when they paused to read the lettering on the memorial.

“It’s nice that it’s honoring soldiers,” Ayana said. Her mother gently
explained that the memorial was honoring Confederate soldiers in particular.

“It’s for the people who wanted to keep slavery?” Ayana said, her eyes
returning to the monument. She grew quiet. “Oh.”

Ms. Bolden said she didn’t believe the memorial should be destroyed. “They
should put it in a museum so people can get an explanation of what it is,”
she said. “It just shouldn’t be here.”

===

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
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