Striking Back Against the anti-Southern Humiliation Ritual Tour
Concerned Citizens Refuse to Send Confederate Sculptures to LA’s Monuments Exhibition
Concerned Citizens Refuse to Send Confederate Sculptures to LA’s Monuments Exhibition
The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation (SVBF), on behalf of concerned citizens, filed a request for an emergency injunction June 27 against the city of Richmond to prevent previously removed Monument Avenue Beaux Arts monuments and cannons from being sent to LA’s Monuments Exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art. The show, which will open this fall, will be a controversial display of some graffiti laden and damaged Confederate sculptures along with modern works satirizing the South. The negative condition of some of the pieces will only serve to stir up racial animus and animosity toward Confederate memorials still standing. A number of the monuments started to be vandalized after the Charleston shooting event of 2015 and more memorials were attacked and removed in the aftermath of the 2020 riots. In addition, the exhibition has condemned the South in their press release as “white supremacists” for putting up funerary monuments well after the Civil War even though the North similarly put up funerary monuments well after the war.
The LA Monuments show ignores basic facts about the aftermath of the Civil War. Having a good death in 1800s was very important, meaning if possible, being surrounded family and friends when passing as Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson experienced. Since that was impossible on the battlefield, being given a decent burial became meaningful. This period saw new developments in embalming techniques that allowed the dead whenever possible to be transported back to their homes for burial, thus the need for numerous funerary monuments mostly organized by grieving widows. Since over 600,000 died in the war, the extreme grief was felt by both sides and given tribute by monuments and statues even later when…
To be held in contempt and attempted to be satirized by the likes of Gavieboy and his Califreak followers is a badge of honor. Wear it proudly.