Don't tear down Confederate monuments - do this instead

[struggle4progress]

PUBLISHED: 12:20 EST, 24 July 2015
UPDATED: 12:20 EST, 24 July 2015
By Jack Hitt

... Denmark Vesey was one of the early 19th century's most astonishing slaves ... Vesey also foresaw the basic need for an African-American right to assembly - the first step that would eventually march to 1964 and the landmark Civil Rights Act. So he helped found an all-black church, Emanuel AMC on Calhoun Street - the very one Dylann Roof entered on June 17. An attempt not long ago to have a statue of him stand near Calhoun's in the prominent Marion Square failed, and Vesey's statue was marooned uptown at Hampton Park. Let's rethink that decision ...

... instead of erasing Calhoun Street, let's amplify it: Smalls-Calhoun Street. Robert Smalls ... was a slave in 1862 when he hijacked a Confederate ship in Charleston harbor and cunningly outsmarted numerous Confederate ships and Southern fort commanders to slip out until he found refuge with the U.S. Navy. His audacity forced President Abraham Lincoln to advocate for deploying African-American troops in the war ...

Yale University, which is struggling with what do about one of its older colleges - called Calhoun College - could rename it Creed-Calhoun. The first African-American graduate of any Yale college was Van Rensselaer Creed, who was appointed by Lincoln to serve as a surgeon in the Union Army and who developed mixed-race practices in New Haven and Brooklyn ...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3173702/Dont-tear-Confederate-monuments--instead.html

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. We should not hide our past.

Last edited Sat Jul 25, 2015, 04:27 PM - Edit history (1)

But should teach it as a warning.

[haikugal]

2. Agree completely.

Thanks!

[marble falls]

3. Statues of swords turned into statues of ploughshares.

[lastlib]

4. Carve Martin Luther King's face into Stone Mountain

above all those Confederate traitors.

[yurbud]

5. good idea, though I have a very cost effective one: paint uniforms on statues blue

and rename monuments after Union generals.

[CTyankee]

6. Excellent idea about Yale's Calhoun College. That whole system applies to

residential, not academic, "colleges." A Yale degree is a Yale degree. And if old 'hounies don't like it, tough.