Brent’s Reviews > Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments > Status Update

To continue dragging "a heavy weight, the dead, dead corpse of the Confederacy," one former Confederate leader told his son in 1886, "is stupid and daily suicidal. Let us live in the present and for the future." Our monuments were put up by people who wanted to freeze American society into place, with themselves at the top. But we, unlike the stone and metal figures on a monument, can decide that it is time to move.

Things changed in 2015, after Charleston, and 2017, after Charlottesville. But although a few monuments came down, after the protestors went home, the real change was in the tightening of protections for monuments. Now, again, Americans are questioning our monuments. Again, we might forget to keep paying attention, allowing a small number of people to make our decisions for us.

Removing a monument alone does nothing to change our future. Change happens through the conversations we have when we talk about monuments and the history they embody. A removal without a conversation hides the problem. We need to acknowledge how and why our monuments were created. We need to reveal their secrets to take away their power.

Monuments like Stone Mountain are often defended as sources of historical truth. We think monuments manifest the highest ideals of a community. [Stone Mountain and Mt. Rushmore sculptor] Borglum shows that their creators were often willing to celebrate the deathless virtue of whomever paid them best.

Debates about monuments often turn into arguments about the character of the people they honor. ... For what purpose were they made, and how do they continue to shape the lives of viewers today? ... Stone Mountain was created by people more interested in lining their own pockets than in honoring Southern history. Why should we keep celebrating the work of con artists?