With all these Confederate statues being removed around the country, one must wonder where they will end up?
President Donald Trump described them as “beautiful monuments” that will be missed.
However, many people see them as racist and glorifications of the actions of the Confederacy during the Civil War. I mean, part of the country split away from us, do we really want to glorify that?
These statues have created an additional headache for the cities they are in: what to do with them when they are removed.
Some people have suggested museums. Others have suggested melting down the metal to make statues of Civil Rights leaders.
Baltimore city councilman Brandon Scott wrote:
“Melting them down and using the materials to make monuments for Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, Harriet Tubman would be powerful!”
The mayor’s office said that was unlikely.
Several of them have been removed recently. One statue in Durham, North Carolina was removed by protesters. Soon after, the North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper tweeted:
“The racism and deadly violence in Charlottesville are unacceptable but there is a better way to remove these monuments.”
This week, the city council of Baltimore voted to remove their Confederate statue. A work crew came and took it down on Wednesday.
As of April 2016, there were 718 Confederate monuments and statues on public property in the United States.
Despite the country-wide outcry against them, there isn’t a set way for jurisdictions to dispose of the statues when removed.
Unfortunately, some cities are accepting monuments that have been taken down from other cities. That seems counterproductive. It is still glorifying racism and the Confederacy, no matter where the statues end up.
Some people look at it as simply a historical statue. A small town in Kentucky, Brandenburg, welcomed a Confederate statue that had been removed by the University of Louisville. Brandenburg Mayor Ronnie Joyner said:
“I don’t look at it as a black versus white issue, I don’t look at it as a slavery issue. This is a monument that is dedicated to Confederate veterans.”
I think they would be better off in a museum instead of public land.
Featured image via Twitter.
