Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue was designed to erase a history we need to remember

ARTNET NEWS
By Ben Davis

The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists and neo-Nazis during the "Unite the Right" rally August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

The president has very effectively appropriated the term “fake news” for his own ends. I hope, then, that I am not walking into a trap when I say that the important thing to stress about the contested monument to Robert E. Lee is that it represents “fake history.” Moreover, its particular brand of fake history is engineered to do exactly what it is doing now. The Reconstruction Era (1865-1977) had seen newly freed blacks participate in political life to an unprecedented and, in the minds of their former masters, unacceptable degree. The cause of Confederate preservation would aid in reconsolidating the prestige of traditional Southern elites. They sought, as James M. Lindgren wrote, “to win through monuments and pamphlets what Lee had lost at Appomattox.” [More]