Archives board OKs plan to move Ole Miss Confederate statue

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


Emily Wagster Pettus, Associated Press
Updated 12:02 pm CST, Friday, December 6, 2019

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The University of Mississippi's proposal to move a Confederate soldier monument from a central spot on the Oxford campus to a Confederate cemetery was approved Friday by trustees of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The cemetery is in a less prominent location on campus.

The move still needs to be approved by the board that governs Mississippi’s eight public universities.

The monument is one of many erected across the South more than a century ago. Critics say its display near the university's main administrative building sends a signal that the school glorifies the Confederacy and glosses over the South’s history of slavery.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/education/article/Board-considers-plan-on-moving-Ole-Miss-14886316.php

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Confederate statue relocation program.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. I go against the grain on these issues from most other DUers

but I don't think they have made a bad choice, because I do not see how you erase history by destroying it or hiding it. Conquerors have tried through the millennia, but it still happened. You can educate about history, you can erect plaques to explain or put context to events and personalities, you can compensate later generations of victims, but you can't change it. Moreover, you can't say to descendants of soldiers who served in the Army of the Confederacy that it didn't happen. Society has a lot of power here, we know what happened, why, what was wrong about it, we know it offended and continues to offend Americans of African descent, and all that is fine. You can't hide it anymore than you can hide the reasons behind the Irish Potato Famine, the Armenian genocide, the fall of New France to England in 1763.

[guillaumeb]

3. I do not think anyone would argue that it happened,

but to suggest that slavery was not the reason for it happening would buy into the narrative that the South was not the aggressor, and not the site of chattel slavery.

[ArizonaLib]

4. Right - it should not be memorialized or celebrated.

The telling thing about people who defend confederate monuments is they don't erect monuments to the king of England or Satan for example. In human history, whole cultures have been destroyed and/or forgotten, so leaving behind slave culture is possible.

[guillaumeb]

5. Agreed.

In my view, this is no different than people memorializing Hitler.

[guillaumeb]

2. Considering that Nikki Haley recently spoke of how the South ws

defending heritage, and sacrifice, and all such noble motives, even more re-examination of history is needed in this country.

[ronatchig]

6. Indeed

The truth is that the confederates were in rebellion against the lawful government. That means in plain language ,they were traitors to USA. The flag and all the confederate statuary are symbols glorifying treason.

[SansACause]

7. Still needs Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) approval

Therein is the rub, because the majority of the IHL board are political appointees of a Governor who continues to declare April as Confederate Heritage Month.