Damaged Confederate Monuments Just Feel Better

March 31, 2021

ATLANTA- The confederate monuments at Oakland Cemetery received an update from activists who added “BLM’ and “racist traitor” to the obelisk and Lion of Atlanta. I happened upon it several months later and, after four years of republicans stoking the fires of bigotry, I was thrilled to see the people on the receiving end still fighting to move us forward. It so energized me that I posted photos online to share the experience. I was unprepared for the backlash and reminded that there is no acceptable way to protest and, sadly, of white women’s role in maintaining the patriarchy.

The Victorian garden cemetery stretches for 46 scenic acres in the center of the city. I have often found comfort and serenity in wandering Oakland’s paths, but the confederate monuments have always bothered me. Atlanta likes to think of itself as “the city too busy to hate,” but that has not been my experience. As a masculine gay woman, who identifies as a Big Dyke, I am approached almost daily by people who feel compelled to tell me I’m going to hell if I don’t repent and get right with god. The racism and bigotry here can be quite covert and individual, the State seemingly adopting a “peace at any price” approach, and treating each instance individually to avoid addressing the larger problem and preserve the existing power structure. Although Georgia is 75% urban, rural thinking dominates, empowering bigots and making life difficult for many of us. The confederacy is so common in metro Atlanta that my biggest takeaway from the January republican insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was surprise at the reaction of the rest of the country to the confederate flag in the Capitol; I literally see it on cars and houses every day and even, until recently, on the Georgia state flag. To see it in the U.S. Capitol felt commonplace. It was a wake-up call when others were shocked by the image.

The Lion of Atlanta statue, with its “Unknown Confederate Dead” inscription, sits atop a mass grave that includes more than rebel soldiers. Typhoid was spreading through Atlanta during the Civil War, claiming 60% of the people who contracted it and overwhelming the burial system. Many of the individuals in this mass grave were members of the community, not confederate soldiers. Assuming their beliefs aligned with those who wished to secede from the Union is a mistake, but supports revisionist confederate ideology. The statue itself closely resembles the Lion of Lucerne, and was commissioned more than a decade after Mark Twain described it in his travelogue, yet the sculptor, mayor of nearby Canton, Georgia, claimed his idea was completely original. Atlanta would again copy this work when it carved the confederate soldiers into the side of Stone Mountain- the massive Lion of Lucerne is also cut into the side of a former quarry that now serves as a park. To encounter these garish monuments in an otherwise peaceful environment is offensive and upsetting. I am reminded I am seen as less-than and of the horrors southerners inflicted on people they considered below themselves. That these statues remain, celebrating confederates with minimal counter to the narrative tells me these sentiments persist.

The adjacent 60-foot obelisk was the tallest structure in Atlanta when it was unveiled on confederate memorial day in April, 1874, a holiday the state would recognize (along with Robert E. Lee’s birthday) as such until 2015, when it simply changed the name to “state holiday” and continued to celebrate. The obelisk sits at a crossroads, and is hard to miss at the center of the cemetery. I have often wondered why, when so much of Atlanta was in ruins, they squandered resources on a monument such as this, rather than helping people rebuild homes and businesses. More recently, I’ve come to see the American south as an occupied territory and monuments like this are reminders that white supremacy continues to reign. In 2019, Georgia greatly expanded an existing law that protected military monuments, broadening its reach and prohibiting local governments from moving or altering such monuments, proving racism is alive and well and enjoying state support.

Oakland Cemetery is itself a cautionary tale of white supremacy. It is divided into sections, whites and honorary-whites taking the majority of the space with sections designated for those of African American and Jewish descent. In the original Jewish section, the markers are close together, barely leaving room to walk between graves. The expanded section is better, but separate is still not equal. When the cemetery was created in 1850, African Americans were an enslaved people and buried in what is known as “slave square” at the back of the original six acres. When the cemetery expanded after the Civil War, these graves were in the center, so they moved the individuals to the new Potter’s Field, again at the back of the cemetery, keeping no records and placing no markers. They simply tilled the earth at the original site and sold the plots to white families.

These sections reveal much about life under white supremist rule, reminding us what it means to live and die without being valued by the larger community. Maintenance and upkeep of the cemetery has increased tremendously in recent decades, but in an uneven and hierarchal manner that reminds us that things haven’t changed as much as I’d like and, frankly, as much as I need. Seeing the damage done to these confederate monuments energized my spirit and reminded me I’m not fighting alone. Change is coming.

I posted photos of the damaged monuments to my social media pages in hopes of giving folkx like me, who were beaten down by the last four years of republican treachery, an emotional boost. I was unprepared for the backlash. Most of it was private- messages and emails expressing indignation about “history” being challenged. If you think what you’re saying is correct, why would you whisper it in secret? I am reminded there is no acceptable way to protest. Some, mostly white, people want everyone to just be quiet and accept things as they are; they can do so because the system works for them. The rest of us must fight daily and we know our survival is not guaranteed.

“If we cannot justify the South in the act of Secession, we will go down in History solely as a brave, impulsive but rash people who attempted in an illegal manner to overthrow the Union of our Country.” – Clement A. Evans, brigadier general, confederate states of america