In high school, I, like many Richmonders walked down Monument Avenue during class field trips. I marveled at its beauty with my friends and thought simply of how I loved this town.
In high school, I, like many Richmonders walked down Monument Avenue during class field trips. I marveled at its beauty with my friends and thought simply of how I loved this town.
Emily Watlington is a Richmond native and art historian currently based in Boston at the Massachusetts College for Art and Design.
She told me a similar story about herself. We both wanted to one day own a house on the avenue. Neither one of us thought about the statutes of men, and they are only men, on the avenues and what they could represent.
The recent vandalism on the avenue has resurfaced a conversation we only began to have as we approached adulthood. What impact do these statues have on our city? What do they mean to us?
The vandalism, for many, is a response to the racially motivated shooting at a historic church in South Carolina that resulted in the murder of nine African Americans and the resurgence of the #BlackLivesMatter movement across the country, but there is a precedent for vandalism of the monuments.
So as Richmonders, we now stand at a crossroads. What conclusion can we draw to about these monuments and does it warrant any action?
Watlington has researched the history of Monument Avenue in order to see how the monuments got here and what should be done about them.
“I think the core of our discussion as we go forward is how we want to display these so they more accurately reflect a more complicated narrative,” she said. “And then how we can address this issue democratically.”
She said that many argue the value of the Confederate monuments is that they reflect a part of our cultural heritage, but she points out they also glorify it.
“It’s only one small part of the Richmond narrative, and I think that just because it’s historical doesn’t mean it’s politically benign,” Watlington said.
In a city that is 50 percent black, the statues represent a history of oppression that has never faded from the daily lives of black people in this country. That cultural heritage has never really belonged to many people in this city.
Looking back, Monument Avenue’s architecture was designed so that black servants could access the elite homes through back alleys and never step foot on the avenue itself. The first statue built was Robert E Lee’s in 1890, 25 years after the end of the Civil War.
“He was built on undeveloped land just west of what was then Richmond City limits and the idea was that Richmond elite would move west to follow Lee, which they did,” Watlington said.
As more statues were added to commemorate Confederate heroes, a black housing settlement was “forcefully donated to the city to make room for Stonewall Jackson who was erected in 1919.”
The people living there were not presented with a choice. The city wanted their land and it could be procured by confirmation proceedings without their permission.
It wasn’t until 1996 that anyone unassociated with the Confederacy was added to the avenue.
Richmonder Arthur Ashe posed for his statue while sick with AIDS. Remembered as a black tennis champion and civil rights leader, his placement was widely contested on both sides.
As Watlington points out, today, Ashe stands at the end of the Avenue, outnumbered by white supremacists. She suggests that Richmond should push to add black heroes to the Avenue, but she recognizes that she doesn’t speak for the whole city and advocates for a democratic approach.
“I think too many people are opposed to taking them down for that to be a practical proposal right now, but I also think that if we did, it would take generations for the memory of these monuments to be erased from the sight,” she said.
She spoke of a similar project undertaken by artist Sophie Calle in East Berlin. Calle photographed empty sites that formerly held monuments to Lenin and then interviewed people about their memories of the sites, Watlington said.
“Many of them held this odd mythic nostalgia and they had reconstructed the monument in their minds to fit their ideals and what they wanted to remember.”
Because of this, she said simply removing the monuments runs the risk of turning those men into perceived victims in the public’s eye, which isn’t productive for anyone. She said adding black heroes would illustrate a more complicated narrative and challenge the story as it is currently told on Monument.
“I think Governor Wilder would be a great person to honor on the avenue, he was such a huge advocate for Ashe’s placement and he’s been really vocal in the current debate,” she said. “He’s also America’s first black governor and his grandparents were enslaved in Goochland County, so it would be quite striking to have him staring down General Lee.”
She says the current debate is rooted in passionate feelings on both sides, making it a difficult conversation.
“I think a lot of people have different views on what they think confederate signals,” she said. “I think that some people genuinely don’t think that it signals slavery and that’s not what they’re trying to cling to when they argue to preserve it.”. “I think some arguments for preservation are racially motivated, consciously and not. I think it’s one thing if that’s your take, that it’s not racial, but you have to understand that for a lot of people it is.”
She says she struggled with her own suggestion of simply adding black heroes like Governor Wilder to the Avenue.
“I worry that placing a black hero on this avenue sort of reduces them to part of this narrative about racial tensions as opposed to just honoring them autonomously,” she said. “But I think it’s important that Arthur Ashe not be alone on the avenue.”
Watlington also said the statues in no way cause people to be racist, but that they are allowed to be displayed uncontested is instead a symptom of the current system, allowing us to be complicit in racist structures.
“I think there’s a certain human desire to identify with your roots and some people feel that more strongly than others,” she said. “It’s healthy and good on some levels, but I think that people can also do that while being critical as well. So, ‘I came from it and therefore it is good,’ doesn’t make that much sense.”
