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Recontextualizing the Lost Cause

Will Gonzalez | October 28, 2020

Topics: Confederate monuments, Edward Valentine, Jefferson Davis, Monument Avenue, Richmond protests, the Lost Cause, The Valentine, The Valentine Studio Project

Valentine museum founder Edward Valentine was responsible for sculpting multiple Confederate monuments around Richmond. Now the museum he founded hopes to display his statue of Jefferson Davis in order to confront the role Valentine, and Richmond, played in the Lost Cause.

Following the protests in Richmond over the summer and the subsequent removal of Confederate statues from Monument Avenue, some of those statues were taken to a wastewater treatment plant for storage. But for the majority of the statues, as with statues taken down across the country, their longterm destination is currently unknown. 

Some people have called for Confederate statues to be displayed in museums, but there are not many cases of that happening at the moment. However, the Valentine, a museum in Downtown Richmond near VCU’s medical campus, wants to acquire the statue of Jefferson Davis that formerly resided on Monument Ave. They hope to reinterpret and recontextualize the work in an upcoming exhibit, which will highlight Richmond’s role in the Lost Cause — and that of the Valentine itself.

The Valentine was co-founded in 1898 by Richmond sculptor Edward Virginius Valentine. Valentine was born in 1838 in Richmond. He studied as a bronze sculptor in Paris, Italy, and Berlin before returning to Virginia. Once he’d returned, he sculpted several statues, many of which were of Confederate figures, to be displayed across Virginia, as well as in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans.

Some Richmond statues that were produced by Valentine include Williams Carter Wickham in Monroe Park, Thomas Jefferson in front of the Jefferson Hotel, and both Matthew Maury and Jefferson Davis on Monument Avenue. As the sculptor of so many of Virginia’s Confederate monuments, Valentine is known as one of the primary creators of Lost Cause iconography.

Sculpture tools of Edward Valentine. Photo via The Valentine/Facebook

The Lost Cause movement began in the years following the Civil War. In the early 1900s, organizations such as the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy erected Confederate statues in order to preserve racist power structures in the South. They also published and distributed textbooks instilling the notion that the Civil War began over states’ rights and the threat from the increasingly aggressive North, as opposed to over slavery. 

“Part of the role [Valentine] plays is creating a series of monuments and sculptures related to the Civil War. But he also becomes part of a movement to create a new story around the Civil War,” said Bill Martin, the museum’s director. “All of these things created, at least for white people in the South, a sense of comfort. They were dealing with something that was so horrible, the only way you could look back at it was to create a myth.”

The Lost Cause picked up steam in the 1880s and lasted well into the 20th century. The first statue on Monument Avenue, Robert E. Lee, was erected in 1890 and Matthew Maury, the last one to arrive before the unveiling of Arthur Ashe in 1996, wasn’t erected until 1929. Lost Cause imagery and messages were prominent in The Valentine until the 1930s, when the museum, which had been run by the Valentine family throughout its history, began to be managed by a professional staff. At the time, The Valentine was the only museum in Richmond.

“We’re art, we’re science, we’ve got archaeological stuff, you name it,” said Martin. “We were the Smithsonian of Richmond.”

With the shift in management came a shift in focus for the museum as well, to Virginia’s history — but not the revisionist history that was characteristic of the Lost Cause era. In the 1950s, The Valentine curated one the earliest exhibitions on Richmond’s Jewish community, followed by exhibits on African Americans in the city.

“In the last 50 years, the institution has been pushing people to think about Richmond’s history differently,” said Martin.

The Valentine intends to continue providing a candid look at the city’s history with The Valentine Studio Project, their upcoming exhibit that will reinterpret and recontextualize the work of Valentine. The center of this exhibit will be the statue sculpted by Edward Valentine of Confederate president Jefferson Davis in its current state, covered in pink paint and dents from being knocked down into the street by demonstrators in June.

The Jefferson Davis statue on Monument Avenue, immediately after being toppled by protesters on June 11, 2020. Photo by Landon Shroder.

The acquisition of the statue has to be approved by City Council, and the museum plans to use 2021 as a planning period in order to get the exhibit ready while they await the decision from the local government. The museum has also published a survey online, which is open until November 1, to get an idea of what the public knows about the Lost Cause, as well as whether they are interested in things such as guided tours through the exhibits.

“If you’re talking about racism, do you just want to talk about it with the people you came with? Do you want to talk about it with your family members after the fact? Or is something you might be comfortable discussing in a small group setting?” said Christina Vida, the exhibition’s curator. “For us, that’s going to help us gauge not only the normal visitor experience, but also some of the programs that we’ll continue to plan for once the studio space is open to the public.”

By displaying the statue in its current state, The Valentine intends to tell the story of the Lost Cause and Richmond’s pivotal role in the movement, but also of the protests that took place in the city’s streets this summer.

“With most of the city’s Confederate statues having come down in June and early July of 2020, it puts a physical end point on the Lost Cause public art here in town,” said Vida. “And yet, there are so many impacts that we’re still experiencing, whether it’s in housing or healthcare or education disparities, that just taking down public art isn’t going to fix.”

The Valentine hopes that, by starting with history and moving to current events, they can show the ways in which the decisions Richmond made a century ago are still impacting the city today.

“We would like to address 2020,” said Vida, “so that when our guests leave The Valentine, they walk out with fresh eyes, and are thinking about how Richmond 100 or 150 years ago is still present.”

Top Photo by Joey Wharton

NAACP Sues Hanover County Over Confederate School Names

Owen FitzGerald | August 29, 2019

Topics: Confederate generals, Hanover County NAACP, Hanover County schools, Jefferson Davis, Lee-Davis High School, Robert Barnette, robert e lee, stonewall jackson, Stonewall Jackson Middle School

The Hanover County chapter of the NAACP is suing the county and its school board over the names of two schools named after Confederate leaders. 

The lawsuit states that the names of the schools — Lee-Davis High School and Stonewall Jackson Middle School — violate African American students’ protection under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The NAACP believes the names also violate students’ First Amendment protection from “compelled speech.” For example, the lawsuit suggests that wearing uniforms donning the schools’ names and mascots forces students to engage in speech they do not approve of or agree with. Lee-Davis’ mascot is the “Confederates,” and Stonewall Jackson’s mascot is the “Rebels.”

Lee-Davis is named after General Robert E. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The school did not fully integrate until 1969, a full decade after it first opened. The NAACP claims that naming both schools after Confederate figures “told every African American student that s/he was not welcome in Hanover County.”

In 2018, Hanover’s school board members voted 5-2 against changing the names of the schools. In June, Marla Coleman — one of the two members who voted in favor of changing the schools’ names — was removed from her position on the board. The supervisor who refrained from renewing Coleman’s role on the school board told the Richmond Times Dispatch that Coleman’s vote on the name changes had no bearing on the decision to name someone else to the position.

Robert Barnette, President of Hanover NAACP (Photo via Facebook)

The NAACP’s suit comes at a time when numerous schools in Virginia are making decisions to leave Confederate-named schools in the past. At the beginning of 2018, 31 schools in Virginia were named after Confederate figures. By the end of the year, 18 of those schools had changed their names.

Richmond is no stranger to these changes. Last year, the Richmond Public School Board voted to change the name of J.E.B Stuart Elementary School to Barack Obama Elementary School by an 8-1 vote.  

The NAACP first urged Hanover County to change the names of the schools in 1970. The request was made again in 2017. The county’s response was to conduct a survey, which showed a large majority of residents did not want to see the names or mascots of the schools changed.

Robert Barnette, Hanover NAACP president, said the lawsuit was not the desired approach to seeing the proposed changes brought about.

“We felt like they made their decision and they’re just not going to take us seriously,” Barnette told the Washington Post. “We wanted to make sure we had exhausted all options before we went the legal route.”

Of the nearly 2,600 students that attend the two schools, almost 10 percent are African American. Representatives from Hanover County have refused to comment on the impending lawsuit.

Top Photo: Lee-Davis High School, via Facebook

Opinion Paves Way to Rename ‘Racist’ Jefferson Davis Highway

VCU CNS | March 26, 2019

Topics: Arlington County, General Assembly, Jeff Davis Highway, Jefferson Davis, Jefferson Davis Highway, Mark Herring, Mark Levine, renaming roads, state roads

Attempting to disassociate from the former Confederate president’s legacy of racism and slavery, Arlington County is taking steps to rename their portion of Jefferson Davis Highway. And Attorney General Herring says they have the legal right to do so.

The portion of Jefferson Davis Highway that runs through Arlington County could be renamed as early as this summer thanks to the discovery of a loophole in state law and a legal opinion from the Virginia attorney general.

Attorney General Mark Herring said the name change does not need approval from the General Assembly. Instead, the Commonwealth Transportation Board has authority to rename the section of Jefferson Davis Highway if Arlington County makes such a request, the opinion said.

Herring’s opinion was requested by Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria. Levine opposes having a road named after Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America.

“In Arlington County, one of the most diverse and progressive localities in the nation, we are saddled with a primary highway that honors a racist traitor and slave owner who led the fight to take up arms against our nation in order to preserve the brutal system of slavery,” Levine said in a newsletter to constituents.

“In that brutal Civil War, more Americans died than in all of our other wars combined. We still live with the terrible legacy of that ruthless and once-legal system of terror that represents America’s greatest shame.”

Before Herring issued his opinion, the general understanding was that local governments lacked authority to change names that the General Assembly had placed on certain roads.

Several years ago, the attorney general’s office issued an advisory opinion saying city governments had the power to rename state highways but county governments didn’t. Last year, legislators killed a bill to authorize local governments to rename highways in their jurisdictions.

On Jan. 1, the section of Jefferson Davis Highway through the city of Alexandria was renamed Richmond Highway to match the name the road has always carried in Fairfax County.

To change the highway’s name in Arlington County, Levine took things into his own hands. He found a loophole in a footnote to transportation legislation that the General Assembly passed in 2012.

That legislation deleted a line in state law prohibiting the Commonwealth Transportation Board from changing the names of “highways, bridges or interchanges as have been or hereafter be named by the General Assembly.”

According to the opinion Herring released Thursday, lawmakers’ actions in 2012 showed “clear legislative intent to empower the CTB to rename transportation facilities that were originally named by the General Assembly.”

“Accordingly, it is my opinion that the Commonwealth Transportation Board may change the name of those portions of Jefferson Davis Highway located in Arlington County, provided that its Board of Supervisors adopts a resolution requesting the renaming,” the opinion said.

The designation of Jefferson Davis Highway began almost a century ago. In 1922, the United Daughters of the Confederacy asked that a Southern transcontinental highway be named to honor Davis, who was a senator from the state of Mississippi before becoming the first and only president of the Confederacy.

The Virginia General Assembly’s response was to name Highway 1 as the Jefferson Davis Highway, stretching from Washington, D.C., to the North Carolina line. Today, Jefferson Davis Highway also can go by other names, such as U.S. Route 1 and Route 18.

Some people want to keep the name as Jefferson Davis Highway. More than 600 people signed an online petition saying renaming the road would be “a slap in the face to U.S. soldiers as a whole and should not be permitted to happen.” However, more than 4,300 signed a petition supporting the name change.

Levine said Arlington County supervisors could ask for the name change this month — and then the request would go to the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

“If all goes well, Arlington street signs could be changed as early as this summer,” he said.

Levine said times have changed since the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to honor Davis and preserve his legacy.

“It’s 2019. It is not 1865, nor 1922, nor even 1953,” Levine said. “We live in a post-Charlottesville time. And the vast majority of Northern Virginia no longer wants to honor the Confederacy or the racist legacy of Jefferson Davis.”

By Alexandra Zernik, Capital News Service.

Monument Avenue and The Insidiously Seductive “Lost Cause” Narrative

Jack Clark | November 20, 2018

Topics: confederate statues, Jefferson Davis, monument ave, the Lost Cause, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Virginia Flaggers

Monument Avenue features statues commemorating five Civil War-era political and military figures, all of whom were on the Confederate side of that conflict. These statues stand at the center of a longstanding controversy that has heated up considerably over the last year or so. Feelings were greatly inflamed after the tragic events surrounding last year’s Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, a rally that originated with the battle over a monument celebrating Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

After seeing the trouble Charlottesville’s Lee statue caused, a great many Richmonders united in attempting to rid our city of our own Lee statue, as well as statues glorifying other Confederate political figures. But quite a few residents in the city still see no cause for consternation. They regard the statues as history, and don’t wish to discuss them any further. Even the Richmond City Council doesn’t seem to want to do anything about the statues; last month, they voted 6-3 against requesting direct control of the monuments from the Virginia state government.

While many today see these statues as lacking modern political context, the fact that their history is inextricable from that of the post-Civil War Lost Cause movement indicates otherwise.

The Lost Cause movement, most prominently represented in Richmond today by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), is heavily invested in the creation of a certain narrative regarding the pre-Civil War past. Getting its start in the decade following the end of the Civil War, the Lost Cause movement has argued for over a century that slavery was an unimportant factor in the war, ignoring secession statements and pre-Civil War declarations by former members of the United States Congress, who left the Union to join the Confederacy.

The narrative pushed by the UDC and the Lost Cause movement instead, one of overwhelming Northern aggression against a valorized yet ill-defined “Southern way of life,” is strongly promoted by the statues displayed on Monument Avenue.

The Lost Cause narrative became so pervasive during the era in which the monuments to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate figures were erected that it showed up in textbooks taught in Virginia schools — and remained there until as recently as four decades ago, in some cases.

A 1914 Virginia History textbook, School History of Virginia by Edgar Sydenstricker and Ammen Burger, contains this quote regarding the life of a slave: “There were some cruel and inconsiderate masters, of course; but they were exceptions. … As a general rule the slaves were happy and contented and were faithful to their owners.” A 1957 textbook called Virginia: History, Government, Geography suggested that slaves were perfectly happy with their situation.

The happiness of these slaves is most famously belied by the incident that took place on August 21, 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia. That day, Nat Turner led a rebellion that resulted in the death of sixty white men, women, and children. Killing children is troubling, but so is slavery — infamously, millions of Africans died while being transported against their will to the Americas. And once they arrived in the US, their infant mortality rates were double that of white Americans of the era.

In this context, Nat Turner’s rebellion, despite its death toll, is more understandable. It wasn’t an isolated case in Virginia either. Take Brother Gabriel, who on October 10th, 1800, was hanged in Richmond, Virginia, along with his two brothers and 23 other slaves, for planning a revolt. In 2017, the decision to create an emancipation-themed statue in Richmond that included both Turner and Gabriel caused significant controversy, with some social media commenters comparing Turner to Hitler.

Yet for over a century, the African-American community of Richmond has had to look at monuments glorifying Civil War generals who fought to keep their ancestors enslaved.

Indeed, there are still people who congregate regularly outside the UDC’s Memorial Building on Boulevard carrying Confederate flags. I saw them while walking by not too long ago, and decided to stop and talk with them. Of course, they supported Monument Avenue remaining unchanged. And when I asked about the impact of slavery on the Southern economy, I heard what can only be described as typical Lost Cause arguments.

“Slavery was on the way out anyway,” one man said, repeating a common Lost Cause myth — one belied by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens’s 1861 Cornerstone Speech. In the speech, Stephens said of the Confederacy, “Its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.” The fact is, one in ten of the South’s enlisted soldiers were slave-owners, and more than one in four lived with their slave-owning parents.

“The South was a society of honor, family, and tradition,” said another man outside the UDC Memorial Building. He argued that the Union posed a threat to the confederate way of life, and the Confederacy was merely defending itself — another Lost Cause talking point. 

The argument regarding whether or not the Confederacy was a legitimate nation or traitor to an already established nation is still waged today. One thing is for sure though — if it’s your son or daughter killed in a war, you don’t care about sides. Hollywood Cemetery’s monument to Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War is both a monument to their sacrifice, and a tribute to a lost generation for the Southern states.

Many from the South feel they were denied a glorious destiny when the war was lost. Yet in being forced to reconstruct their culture, the South has never entirely been willing to own up to some of the more sadistic aspects of that same culture. Signs on the Jefferson Davis monument in particular repeat core Lost Cause concepts; this was exactly why Mayor Stoney’s Monument Avenue Commission recommended earlier this year that that monument be removed from Monument Avenue.

“Of all the statues, this one is most unabashedly Lost Cause in its design and sentiment,” the commission members wrote in their report. They felt that the other four Confederate-focused monuments could remain up if signs contextualizing them were added, but the Davis monument must be taken down.

In order to move forward, we must look back on the past with as vigilant of an eye as possible. Monument Avenue only tells a portion of this city’s story; the things it leaves out are of crucial importance. At some point, we need to decide whether remembering a proud bygone culture is worth romanticizing past injustice.

Top photo: George Washington Custis Lee (1832–1913) on horseback in front of the Jefferson Davis Monument in Richmond, Virginia on June 3, 1907, reviewing the Confederate Reunion Parade. Public domain/via Wikimedia

So Long, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States

John Donegan | July 2, 2018

Topics: black lives matter, Confederate monuments, Jefferson Davis, Mayor Levar Stoney, Monument Avenue, richmond, Richmond monuments

After a long, heated debate, change became the chosen path for Richmond today. According to the Monument Avenue Commission, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney officially recommended the removal of the Jefferson Davis Monument today from Monument Avenue.

“Of all the statues, this one is most unabashedly Lost Cause [sic] in its design and sentiment,” the commissioners wrote in the report.

The board includes Christy Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum, and Sarah Driggs, author of “Richmond’s Monument Avenue,” among others who look to direct the River City away from the ‘lost cause’ narrative many of these monuments represent. And with these monuments having origins in the Confederate ‘lost cause’ mythology and Unite The Right 2.0 coming up in August, the commission came as a much needed response for these controversial monuments.

After nearly one year of intensive study by the ten person commission, the group produced a 117  page report considering the future of Richmond’s Confederate statues, opening the floor to options including removal or relocation of the Confederate statues into a museum, or somewhere with proper context.

“In addition to taking on the responsibility of explaining the monuments that currently exist, I have also asked the commission to look into and solicit public opinion on changing the face of Monument Avenue by adding new monuments that would reflect a broader, more inclusive story of our city,” said Stoney in a statement one year ago. “That is our goal.”

The yearlong review examining the statues originally created to “determine how best to reconcile a particular landscape viewed as both sacred and profane,” is now figuring that for many of the statues, removal is the best option. Riding off the recent change to the Barack Obama Elementary school last month, this is the first of many necessary reforms to a city that has never truly healed.

The report also addresses the monuments of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart and Stonewall Jackson, President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis and Confederate commander Matthew Fontaine Maury with short term changes that will add context to the statues, such as proper signage. They will also consider the opening or expansion into a museum exhibit, where the monuments may be put into proper context that reflects the newly inclusive historical significance the city wants to promote.

The commission’s site currently offers an open forum for public discussion, but is also developing a mobile app and new film and video that looks to rewire the proper narrative about Monument Avenue that is “consistent and historically accurate.”

Jefferson Davis Statue Vandalized for Second Day in a Row

David Streever | October 18, 2017

Topics: confederate, Jefferson Davis, monument ave, Resistance, richmond, vandalism

The statue celebrating Jefferson Davis on Monument Avenue has been tagged with “racist” for the second time in as many days, after crews from Virginia Beach cleaned the same word from a previous tagging late Monday night.

This time, however, the penmanship was better and a second line was added along the bottom of the pedestal with the words “Ban KKK.” Another Confederate monument was vandalized in Norfolk, Virginia, also with red spray paint, reading “#2 Better Luck Never.” It’s a reference to the idea that Confederate monuments serve as participation trophies, a phrase that first emerged as criticism of youth culture before developing into a general weapon in culture war debates.

All of this comes after a tense summer with an over-hyped neo-Confederate rally and a long-postponed discussion in Richmond about Monument Avenue and the Confederate statues. A resolution from Councilman Michael Jones on the statues was scheduled for discussion on Monday but postponed, similarly to the meetings of the Monument Avenue Commission, which is tasked with leading discussions on contextualization of the statues or even removal.

The Commission held only one of its scheduled meetings, which was a constrained but often contentious and raucous debate. The commission’s future meetings have been postponed until a few days after the upcoming election on November 7. The next meeting, which will not allow open comment or discussion, will be held on Nov. 14 at 6 pm at the Library of Virginia.

At least one group says the graffiti has spurred them to new action; the CSA II group, previously responsible for the aforementioned neo-Confederate rally, says the graffiti is a “no go,” using it as a justification for their next planned rally on December 9th.

 

*Photos by Landon Shroder

 

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