Jefferson Davis may vacate his pedestal. Signage explaining the whys and hows of the Monument Avenue statuary might pop up. Those recommendations are part of the 115-page report that the mayor’s 10-member Monument Avenue Commission released July 2, offering considerations on what to do about Monument Avenue.
Whatever happens, it won’t be for some time because bureaucratic wheels grind exceeding slow. Or as the commission says, “both the [city] charter and general state law constrain the city’s discretion.”
Know Your Dillon
Through an odd quirk that has long bedeviled regional planning, Richmond, and all of Virginia’s municipalities, must play an elaborate Mother-May-I game with the General Assembly to make specific alterations, for everything from bus routes and trash dumps to school boards and school holidays and, yes, statuary.
For this wrinkle, please go ahead and blame late-19th-century Judge John Forrest Dillon, who sat on benches of Iowa state and federal courts. At a time of widespread city government corruption, Dillon believed his approach as a way to rescue cities and localities from provincial political pettifoggery. Basically, Dillon sought to save cities from themselves. That worked out so well.
The home-rule and self-determination crowds might want to check into the Dillon Rule isshuh rather than standing in the malefic Richmond sun holding “Save Our Monuments” signs. The out-of-staters who blow into town to do whatever it is they are trying to accomplish beyond confusing the already disorienting roundabouts (O mysteries of The Merge and The Yield!), and upsetting people and wasting taxpayer money wouldn’t know Judge Dillon from Marshal Dillon.
The Missy Elliott Monument Proposal
In conjunction and therefore worth noting is the civic tussle about displaying the Third National Confederate flag outside Sutherlin Mansion in Danville, the place where Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet (less Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge) took refuge from April 3 to 10, 1865. Citing a state law that protects war memorials, a group called Heritage Preservation Association filed suit after the Danville City Council voted in 2015 to allow only U.S., state, local and POW/MIA flags on city-owned sites. A circuit judge ruled in favor of the city, and the Virginia Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal. The estate is also the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History.
A similar 2015 case in Portsmouth originated with that city’s leadership to remove a prominent Confederate memorial to nearby Cedar Grove Cemetery, where a number of Confederate dead are buried. (A petition drive begun last summer to replace the obelisk and Confederate figure with that of Portsmouth native rapper Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott has garnered nearly 34,000 signatures.)
‘Difficult And Complicated’
A 1998 state law bars the removal of war monuments between 1622 and the present, including those related to “the War Between the States” -- no really, see for yourself. The law also prohibits “the placement of Union markings or monuments on previously designated Confederate memorials or the placement of Confederate markings or monuments on previously designated Union memorials.”
Last August, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring gave an advisory opinion that the 1998 law applied only to monuments erected after that year. Earlier, the 2016 General Assembly had attempted to pass another regulation that made clear that the law meant any war-related statue installed at any time. Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed the legislation in part because he felt impractical a “one size fits all” solution.
McAuliffe’s decision read in part, “These discussions are often difficult and complicated. They are unique to each community’s specific history and the specific monument or memorial being discussed. This bill effectively ends these important conversations.”
His veto stands.
Both Ahead and Behind
In the aftermath of the Charleston, South Carolina, massacre of worshipers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, 2015, the movement to remove Lost Cause relics gained greater impetus. New Orleans removed several Civil War-related statues in May 2017.
The Monument Avenue Commission came into being in June 2017. An Aug. 9 public meeting at what is now the Virginia Museum of History and Culture drew more than 500 people and turned into a royal donnybrook.
Four days later, a violent and fatal clash erupted in Charlottesville – stemming in part from the contested plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a city park.
After the Charlottesville events, more than 30 cities (though none in Virginia) removed Confederate monuments and memorials and only one, in Durham, North Carolina, was taken down through unofficial means. In that case, it was one of the many mass-produced thin metal “Silent Sentinel” figures scattered throughout the country in courthouse greens and public squares, sometimes with just a switch of belt buckle from “USA” to “CSA” or a difference in head garb.
Within a short period of time, prominent Confederate/Lost Cause statues were whisked away in Baltimore. (A park where statues of Lee and Stonewall Jackson once stood has since been rededicated to abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman.)
The Confederate statues – often removed at night, and, under the threat of violence – are squirreled away in secret, undisclosed locations. What is to become of them isn’t clear. Museums don’t have the space, manpower or funds to adequately maintain recently deposed secessionists. An argument can be made that Monument Avenue is an outdoor museum in need of information plaques.
The commission report emphasizes that the monuments cannot get taken away “except at the risk of exposure to legal liabilities until either the courts or the General Assembly provide clarity to certain generally applicable state laws. Some monuments, including the Monument Avenue statues, may not be removed without still further action by the General Assembly to negate restrictions contained in the City Charter.”
Finding Appropriate Language
Markers to provide information give rise to the best way to display them for a right-of-way that is designed for automobiles. Zipping along the roundabouts isn’t the best time to crane one’s neck to read. Any experience with those roadside state highway historical markers shows us this. You’re lucky if you get the name. A mobile app is possible.
The nonprofit Civil War Trails, Inc., began in 1994 as a group of historians sought to link through signage the Petersburg battlefield to the Army of Northern Virginia’s surrender at Appomattox. Today, the program guides visitors through more than 1,550 sites in six states covering 2,200 square miles, including 700 locations receiving interpretation after years of being overlooked. These include the birthplace of African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Hillsboro, Maryland, and the Dorchester, Maryland, store used on 21 occasions by Harriet Tubman as a stop in the escaping slave route known as the Underground Railroad. The structure remains with its original floorboards and cabinetry.
You've seen the markers, attractive plaques in frames mounted at a slant, standing sentry at seeming random country crossroads and alongside battlefields and near surviving buildings.
The Trails group has expanded its scope to small parks, museums and cities “spanning the full breadth of American history, topics and sites,” as described on its website.
Since Monument Avenue is a National Historic Landmark district, the National Park Service, “the nation’s storyteller,” and not unfamiliar with nettlesome subjects, might be suited for figuring out a way to interpret the boulevard and its legacy.
Turn and Face the Changes
Out of the meetings and pollings, the commission came to understand this: “If anything is abundantly clear, it is the vast majority of the public acknowledges Monument Avenue cannot and should not remain exactly as it is. Change is needed and desired.” The public, the report continues, “offered many fascinating ideas, and most seemed to favor a multi-faceted and highly creative approach.”
The Jefferson Davis design is the most robust example on the avenue of Lost Cause hagiography. In addition, Davis isn’t from Virginia, and, he already has a statue at his Hollywood Cemetery grave, which should be enough for anybody.
Richmond sculptor Edward V. Valentine fashioned both the Davis figure, with its outstretched hand, and “Vindicatrix” atop the 50-foot column, where she wags her finger in an admonishing manner or is testing for possible changes in historical winds. I wrote about the monument and how “Vindicatrix” became a grandmother.
But you get rid of Davis, and lose the context of one of the saddest stories on Monument Avenue, that of Lewis Harvie Blair, the only Confederate veteran known to have lived on Monument Avenue. For most of his post-Civil War career, he denounced the notion of a Lost Cause. Plus, two of his daughters married European artists who left them to fight the fascists. It’s complicated.
A change is going to come, for sure. How this happens, however, as history reminds us, can yield unforeseen results, which I wrote about in this magazine piece that few of you may not have yet read (ahem) and if you’re not sick of this subject by now, you can make up for the lapse – and warning, this is a Big Topic, Big Breath feature -- by going here.