Sites of Contention—Now What? Towards Inclusive Practices and New Forms of Collective Memory at Confederate Monuments

Sites of Contention—Now What? Towards Inclusive Practices and New Forms of Collective Memory at Confederate Monuments Maura Carey Whang Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science in Historic Preservation Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Columbia University in the City of New York May 2019 ABSTRACT Sites of Contention—Now What? Towards Inclusive Practices and New Forms of Collective Memory at Confederate Monuments Maura Carey Whang Advisor: Jennifer Gray Post Monuments, Baltimore, (Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson, erected 1948), 2017, Matthew Shain Inspired by recent violent and tragic events in Charleston, South Carolina and Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2015 and 2017, respectively, this thesis explores shifting practices of commemoration and memory, through five contentious sites where Confederate monuments once stood: the Robert E. Lee ii Monument at Lee Circle in New Orleans, Louisiana; the Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson Monument at Wyman Park Dell in Baltimore, Maryland; the Nathan Bedford Forrest Monument at Health Sciences Park in Memphis, Tennessee; the Confederate Monument in Demopolis, Alabama; and the Confederate Soldiers Monument in Durham, North Carolina. Central questions explored include the relationships between race, memory, and the production of space; the meanings of cultural memory and history; power and its unequal distribution; erasure and contextualization; and participatory and democratic practices. The methodology employed in this thesis is primarily an exploratory and comparative study that uses new and underrepresented sources, together with traditional scholarly research. Though Confederate monuments have long been contentious, arguably since their erection, the recent events in Charleston and Charlottesville revitalized a national discourse around the meanings and unequal power structures attached to them. Researching historically repressed narratives, together with the contemporary and ongoing nature of these debates, required mining local and historical newspapers, including black newspapers, websites, contemporary journals, news and radio programs, city commission reports, and Twitter for information, as these stories are not found in traditional archives. Such approaches help to pluralize architectural history and preservation practice and to surface previously untold narratives. The case studies all share certain criteria. For example, they are all Confederate monuments on public land and were removed or damaged since the events in Charleston and/or Charlottesville. However, the local circumstances surrounding each monument differ and thus allow me to explore a distinct aspect of the monument problem—such as levels of democratic and public participation, counter-monuments, the manipulation of preservation law, and accidental or illegal removal—in each case study. Analyzing the contemporary events and local politics surrounding specific contentious sites in the United States revealed certain shared processes or practices. These include: advocating for iii recontextualization; the importance of local politics and participatory practices, such as town hall meetings, popular vote, grassroots initiatives, and social media in considering monuments and their sites; the opportunities and limitations of abstract counter-monuments; and the need for a comprehensive understanding of preservation law. It is hoped this analysis will suggest ways preservation might approach these and other contentious sites in the future, helping to advance local, national, and global conversations about how controversial sites can be dealt with more constructively and inclusively moving forward. iv Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................................. vii CHAPTER ONE Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER TWO A Review of Literature on Commemoration, Memory, Spatial Politics, Monument, Race, & their Intersection ................................................................................................................................................. 34 CHAPTER THREE Robert E. Lee, Lee Circle, New Orleans, Louisiana ...................................................................................... 54 CHAPTER FOUR Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Wyman Park Dell, Baltimore, Maryland ......................................... 75 CHAPTER FIVE Nathan Bedford Forrest, Health Sciences Park, Memphis, Tennessee ..................................................... 100 CHAPTER SIX Confederate Monument, at the Intersection of North Main Avenue and East Capitol Street, Demopolis, Alabama .................................................................................................................................................... 128 CHAPTER SEVEN Confederate Soldiers Monument, Old Durham County Courthouse, Durham, North Carolina ............... 152 CHAPTER EIGHT Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 173 v BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................................... 183 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................................. 200 Images ....................................................................................................................................................... 201 List of Removed Confederate Monuments ............................................................................................... 206 vi Acknowledgements I sincerely and gratefully acknowledge Jennifer Gray for her steadfast guidance and encouragement throughout this project from start to finish. Thank you. Working with you has been a tremendous gift. I owe heartfelt thanks to Mabel O. Wilson and Erik Fenstad Langdalen as well, whose expertise, generosity, and feedback greatly benefitted this work and gave me the confidence to reach the end. I am eternally indebted to my family and friends for their unwavering patience, optimism, and understanding. And finally, but most ardently, I dedicate this work to Deegan McClung, who has not only had to watch me tap tapping away while we could have been doing other things, but has tenaciously and abundantly supported me each step of the way. You fill every day with light and joy. vii CHAPTER ONE Introduction On June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, self-proclaimed white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Two years later, on August 11 and 12, 2017, Charlottesville, Virginia played host to a series of violent and deadly riots, when far-right protesters rallied in an attempt to unify the American white nationalist movement and oppose the removal of a monument to Robert E. Lee from the public grounds of a city park. These events shook the United States, and led to a renewed nationwide discourse over not only the meaning of the monuments and symbols of white supremacy and the Confederacy, but of what should be done with these places during this important moment of reckoning. Inspired by these tragic events and the over 110 (and counting) Confederate symbols of power in the United States that the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as having been removed since the Charleston attack, this thesis seeks to understand the circumstances and effects of certain interventions at sites where Confederate monuments have been removed. The objective is to extend the preservation discourse to critically consider the futures of these sites after a removal has already taken place, thus moving beyond the already important work being done to ascertain whether or not certain monuments should be left standing. Both kinds of work should be happening concurrently. Confederate monuments are at the center of these debates, and exist in the American landscape as spatializations of power, specifically Lost Cause and other white supremacist narratives. They represent the collective memory of certain groups of people in the United States, at the expense of others, namely black Americans, which is the result of the narratives that all people of the nation have 1 been handed down over time. As physical and spatial encounters, these sites communicate and function in ways that still exclude scores of Americans because of the color of their skin. These sites have been and endure as products of political motives, yet remain important to the American historical narrative because they are the vehicle by which we are able to remember the past. However, these sites have not accounted for the changes this country has undergone in the last several decades, and have remained for the most part fixed and seemingly immoveable, and appear to be dispensing the same myths, ideologies, and theories they were promoting a century ago. These are the American sites today that have found themselves at the epicenter of a renewed debate. Cities and those organizations or people who have the power to make decisions regarding the public landscape, as well as all stakeholders in a particular site, including preservationists, might look to this thesis to gain insight

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