Defenders of Confederate monuments have argued that the statues should be left standing to educate future generations. One such defender is former President Donald Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee in 2024.
“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” Trump tweeted in 2017. “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”
But since the end of the Civil War, journalists at Black newspapers have told a different story. Despite meager financing and constant threats, these newspapers represented the views of Black Americans and documented the nation’s shortcomings in achieving racial equality.
According to many of these writers, the statues were never designed to tell the truth about the Civil War. Instead, the monuments were built to enshrine the the myth of the “Lost Cause,” the false claim that white Southerners nobly fought for states’ rights – and not to preserve slavery.
In 1921, for instance, the Chicago Defender published an article under the headline “Tear the Spirit of the Confederacy from the South” and called for the removal of the statues from across the country because they “lend inspiration to the heart of the lyncher.”
‘Lost Cause’ propaganda
For the last several years, I’ve studied the history of Confederate monuments by poring over the letters and records of the organizations that campaigned for their construction. My research students and I have also reviewed countless reactions to the monuments published in real time in Black newspapers.
What is clear is that from the late nineteenth century until today, Confederate monuments were part of a relentless propaganda campaign to restore the South’s reputation at dedication ceremonies, parades, reunions and Memorial Day events.
Timed to coincide with a reunion of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the speakers openly bragged about how they were sweeping Northern-authored textbooks out of Southern schools and replacing them with friendlier accounts of the Civil War.
Defenders of Confederate monuments have argued that the statues should be left standing to educate future generations. One such defender is former President Donald Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee in 2024.
“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” Trump tweeted in 2017. “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”
But since the end of the Civil War, journalists at Black newspapers have told a different story. Despite meager financing and constant threats, these newspapers represented the views of Black Americans and documented the nation’s shortcomings in achieving racial equality.