The past that Alabama chooses to honor says a lot about us

  When you come out from under the rusty monoliths inscribed with the names of lynching victims and the counties that bear the guilt of their deaths at Montgomery’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice, you come to another set of monoliths lying on the ground.

  They’re duplicates of what you’ve just seen. The Equal Justice Initiative, which runs the memorial, has offered them to each American county where a lynching took place. It’s a reminder that the past lines our paths and runs beneath our feet.

The hollow malevolence of Jefferson Davis

  Even Jim Crow Alabama couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for Jefferson Davis.

  When an Alabama House representative filed a bill in 1900 to make his birthday a holiday, the Birmingham Post-Herald called it “an event which the general public does not remember and has no wish to be reminded of.”

Confederate Christmas ornaments are smaller than statues – but they send the same racist message

  As Christmas approaches, many families undertake a familiar ritual: an annual sojourn to the attic, basement, or closet to pull out a box of treasured ornaments bought, created, and collected over years, even generations.

  Hanging these ornaments on the tree is an opportunity to reconnect with memories of personal milestones, holiday icons and, in many cases, destinations visited.

  But, I argue, it may be time to take some of these old travel keepsakes off the tree.

Confederate symbols have no place in public spaces. Stone Mountain is no exception.

  Stone Mountain is the world’s largest monument to white supremacy. The enormous landform – the centerpiece of a state park that draws more than 4 million visitors a year, some 15 miles northeast of Atlanta – is marred by a massive carving commemorating the hateful legacy of the Confederacy.

  The carved surface depicts Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in a reverent light across three acres. The men sit on horseback, hats over their hearts, in a tableau that cannot be interpreted as anything other than a celebration of the Confederacy and the values – white supremacy and the enslavement of Black people – for which it stood.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1564: An open letter to the people of Alabama

  I write this letter out of reluctant hope and constant pain. I am reluctantly hopeful the perspective set forth in this letter will be heard. I am greatly pained because history tells me that it will not be heard. Still I write because the issue is both important and urgent. I am writing about the issue of monuments on public property. Some say monuments are just big statues or names on buildings, streets, roads, bridges and public places and do not really matter.  Therefore, we should just leave monuments alone. I pray to differ. Monuments matter a whole lot because they impact past, present and future generations.

The state of the Confederacy in 2017

  Before the sun rose on Monday – a day celebrated in Alabama and Mississippi as Confederate Memorial Day – one of the monuments to white supremacy had fallen in the Deep South.

  After more than a century on public property in New Orleans, The Liberty Monument was removed by construction workers clad in body armor and masks. The monument was erected to honor to honor a bloody uprising in which members of the White League – a violent white supremacist militia – attempted to overthrow the Reconstruction-era government.

  Despite the monument’s link to white supremacy, the prospect of its removal had enraged some people in the Crescent City, prompting death threats and requiring workers to don gear that was more suited for working a riot than removing a monument.

Study finds 1,500 government-backed tributes to the Confederacy across U.S.

  At least 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy can be found in public spaces across the country, mostly in the Deep South, according to a report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Most were put in place during the early decades of Jim Crow or in reaction to the civil rights movement.

  The report – Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy – catalogs 1,503 examples of monuments and statues; flags; city, county and school names; lakes, dams and other public works; state holidays; and other symbols that honor the Confederacy.