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We've been sitting on this story for a couple of weeks, but now we can finally get to it. To start, take a look at this photo:
This was erected in 1908 by the Atlanta chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), outside the old county court house. This is a very standard monument; the UDC put up thousands of obelisks (and other statues) like this one in the years after the Civil War, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
And now, a close-up from a couple of years ago:
This tells you a couple of things. First, the monument had inscriptions on all four sides that were full of Lost Cause-inspired verbiage. The worst of the four (not shown here) said:
These men held that the states made the union, that the Constitution is the evidence of the covenant, that the people of the State are subject to no power except as they have agreed, that free convention binds the parties to it, that there is sanctity in oaths and obligations in contracts, and in defense of these principles they mutually pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
The theory of the Constitution advanced here is exactly the one that the Civil War killed. States are not, in fact, a power unto themselves. Meanwhile, the last bit ("pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor") is a callback to the fellows who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence (the last line of the document, of course, is "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor"). In other words, the leaders of the Confederacy were exactly like the leaders of the American Revolution. Uh, huh.
The second thing you can see in the picture is that the monument, over the years, became controversial, for obvious reasons. That reached a fever pitch after George Floyd was murdered; the photo shows some small amount of defacing that happened, along with the plethora of Black Lives Matter (and related) signs that were left at the base. It became problematic enough that judge Clarence Seeliger ordered the obelisk to be removed in June of 2020, on the basis that it was a public nuisance. That judge, incidentally, had a very interesting career; he first assumed his bench after defeating the judge who sentenced Martin Luther King Jr. to hard labor. Later Seeliger became the first Georgia judge to remove the Confederate flag from his courtroom. He also worked on other causes, like heading up the local domestic violence task force, and he just retired after 40 years as a jurist.
The reason this is in the news (again) is that a replacement for the obelisk has just been installed. Here it is:
That, of course, is former representative John Lewis. The name of the sculpture, which is carved on the base along with Lewis' name and dates, is "Empathy." The artist, Basil Watson, depicts Lewis with his hands clasped over his heart, a gesture the Representative often used to communicate "love." So, we've got a monument to white men who preached division and hate replaced by a monument to a Black man who preached unity and love. If that's not an upgrade, we don't know what is.
Have a good weekend, all! (Z)