Storify: No History Lost

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

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[After the Durham Confederate Statue was taken down.]

We're gonna see a lot of "I'm sad a piece of history has been lost" takes today so let's cheer those people up!! No, it wasn't. THREAD.

First of all, read this thread about how and why Confederate memorials were mass produced as shoddily as possible.

@taber: Why did the statue go down so easy? Many "Lost Cause" era C monuments were mass-produced in the cheapest way possible for mass distribution.

@taber: There wasn't even a layer of the most basic mortar holding the pedestal to the base. Gravity was enough for granite. Cheap, tacky crap.

@taber: So long story short, if you see a CSA soldier on a pedestal at one county courthouse, chances are the same soldier is at 5, 10, 30 others

@taber: The. Exact. Same. Once you made the same mold for a bronze soldier, you can cast it as many times as you liked and sell it

We put up hundreds of memorials in the space of a few years during Jim Crow era. The statue in Durham was not sculpted so much as supplied. Literally: McNeel Marble Company, Marietta, GA, Supplier.

Here's the Durham monument.

Here's the same monument in Lenoir County, a 3 hour drive west. Both by the supplier McNeel Marble.

The Durham statue actually has more significant historical value now than ever before because for the first time in its life, it's unique. So if people are sad at you about losing history, please explain that we GAINED history yesterday. And the Lenoir statue can go in a museum. I mean, I don't care if we museum the Lenoir statue or not, but if OTHER people do, they can hop on that cause any time now.

Oh by the way, here's the exact same statue in Macon County, Franklin. 5 hours drive west.

I believe this is the exact same statue in Robeson, Lumberton. 2 hours drive south of Durham.

Anyway, here's the database I've been pulling from. I'm sure there are others. THE TAKEAWAY HERE IS: if someone is "sad" that "history was lost", you can make their day better!! If they're still "sad" even after they learn that nothing whatsoever has been lost, they might just be racist.

I thought this went without saying, but maybe it needs to be said anyway: These statues were put up to INTIMIDATE, not to remember. Look at the pictures in the thread again. Huge towers of marble and granite, designed to force people to look "up" to the soldier. The Confederate statues aren't meant to be approachable or to remember. They're TOWERS placed in front of COURTHOUSES to INTIMIDATE.

Any student of art, or even just someone with an imagination!, can tell you what these are supposed to evoke. Folks say we have to remember the history lest we repeat it, but these statues WANT us to repeat our history. A white man cast in marble or bronze and set on a massive pillar before the masses. Not in a museum but in front of our courts.

So, no, this isn't just about Liberal Snowflakes wanting to stick it to dead Confederates. It's about casting down a tool of intimidation.