{"id":5827,"date":"2017-08-17T12:12:17","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T19:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=5827"},"modified":"2017-08-17T12:12:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-17T19:12:57","slug":"historians-question-trumps-comments-confederate-monuments-jennifer-schuessler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/08\/17\/historians-question-trumps-comments-confederate-monuments-jennifer-schuessler\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Historians Question Trump\u2019s Comments on Confederate Monuments&#8221; by Jennifer Schuessler"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"story-body-supplemental\">\n<div class=\"story-body story-body-2\">\n<div class=\"story-body-supplemental\">\n<div class=\"story-body story-body-1\">\n<figure id=\"media-100000005366210\" class=\"media photo lede layout-large-horizontal\" role=\"group\" data-media-action=\"modal\" aria-label=\"media\">\n<div class=\"image\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/08\/16\/arts\/16HISTORY-triptych\/16HISTORY-triptych-master768.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/08\/16\/arts\/16HISTORY-triptych\/16HISTORY-triptych-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"George Washington, Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"from left: Gilbert Charles Stuart; via Library of Congress; via Getty Images\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><span class=\"caption-text\">George Washington, Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"credit\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Credit\u00a0<\/span>from left: Gilbert Charles Stuart; via Library of Congress; via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p data-para-count=\"300\" data-total-count=\"300\">\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"300\" data-total-count=\"300\">August 15, 2017 (nytimes.com)<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"300\" data-total-count=\"300\">President Trump is not generally known as a student of history. But on Tuesday, during a combative exchange with reporters at Trump Tower in New York, he unwittingly waded into a complex debate about history and memory that has roiled college campuses and numerous cities over the past several years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"256\" data-total-count=\"556\">Asked about the white nationalist rally that ended in violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., Mr. Trump defended some who had gathered to protect a statue of Robert E. Lee, and criticized the \u201calt-left\u201d counterprotesters who had confronted them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"202\" data-total-count=\"758\">\u201cMany of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cSo this week, it is Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"newsletter-promo\" class=\"newsletter-signup variant-1-hidden \" data-newsletter-productcode=\"RR\" data-newsletter-producttitle=\"Race Related\" aria-labeledby=\"newsletter-promo-heading\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"#continues-post-newsletter\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"200\" data-total-count=\"958\">George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the president noted, were also slave owners. \u201cI wonder, is it George Washington next week?\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cAnd is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"story-body-supplemental\">\n<div class=\"story-body story-body-2\">\n<p id=\"story-continues-2\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"141\" data-total-count=\"1099\">\u201cYou know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?\u201d he added, comparing the removal of statues to \u201cchanging history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-3\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"188\" data-total-count=\"1287\">Mr. Trump\u2019s comments drew strongly negative reactions on Twitter from many historians, who condemned his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KevinMKruse\/status\/897600764394254337\">\u201cfalse equivalence\u201d\u00a0<\/a>between the white nationalists and the counterprotesters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"462\" data-total-count=\"1749\">But \u201cwhere does it stop?\u201d \u2014 and what counts as erasing history \u2014 is a question scholars and others have asked, in much more nuanced ways, as calls have come to remove monuments not just to the Confederacy, but to erstwhile liberal heroes and pillars of the Democratic Party like Andrew Jackson (a slave owner who, as president, carried out Native American removal) and Woodrow Wilson (who as president oversaw the segregation of the federal bureaucracy).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"media-100000005366173\" class=\"media photo embedded layout-large-horizontal media-100000005366173 ratio-tall\" role=\"group\" data-media-action=\"modal\" aria-label=\"media\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Photo<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"image\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/08\/16\/arts\/16HISTORY1\/16HISTORY1-master675.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/08\/16\/arts\/16HISTORY1\/16HISTORY1-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"A pedestal in Durham, N.C., that held a statue of a Confederate soldier before demonstrators pulled it down.\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Madeline Gray for The New York Times\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\"><span class=\"caption-text\">A pedestal in Durham, N.C., that held a statue of a Confederate soldier before demonstrators pulled it down.<\/span><span class=\"credit\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Credit<\/span>Madeline Gray for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"302\" data-total-count=\"2051\">\u201cThe debates that started two or three years ago have saturated the culture so much that even the president is now talking about them,\u201d said\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/law.yale.edu\/john-fabian-witt\">John Fabian Witt<\/a>, a professor of history at Yale, which earlier this year announced that it would remove John C. Calhoun\u2019s name from a residential college.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"153\" data-total-count=\"2204\">Mr. Witt called Mr. Trump\u2019s warning of a slippery slope a \u201cred herring.\u201d There have been, after all, no calls to tear down the Washington Monument.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"402\" data-total-count=\"2606\">Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and law at Harvard who is\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/09\/20\/books\/20hemings.html\">credited<\/a>\u00a0with breaking down the wall of resistance among historians to the idea that Jefferson had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, said that the answer to Mr. Trump\u2019s hypothetical question about whether getting rid of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson also meant junking Washington and Jefferson was a simple \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"361\" data-total-count=\"2967\">There is a crucial difference between leaders like Washington and Jefferson, imperfect men who helped create the United States, Ms. Gordon-Reed said, and Confederate generals like Jackson and Lee, whose main historical significance is that they took up arms against it. The comparison, she added, also \u201cmisapprehends the moral problem with the Confederacy.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"media-100000005366172\" class=\"media photo embedded layout-large-vertical media-100000005366172\" role=\"group\" data-media-action=\"modal\" aria-label=\"media\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Photo<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"image\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/08\/16\/arts\/16HISTORY2\/16HISTORY2-blog427.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/08\/16\/arts\/16HISTORY2\/16HISTORY2-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"A statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va.\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Steve Helber\/Associated Press\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\"><span class=\"caption-text\">A statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"credit\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Credit<\/span>Steve Helber\/Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"216\" data-total-count=\"3183\">\u201cThis is not about the personality of an individual and his or her flaws,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is about men who organized a system of government to maintain a system of slavery and to destroy the American union.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"296\" data-total-count=\"3479\">As for the idea of erasing history, it\u2019s a possibility most scholars do not take lightly. But James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, said that Mr. Trump\u2019s comments failed to recognize the difference between history and memory, which is always shifting.<\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-4\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"120\" data-total-count=\"3599\">When you alter monuments, \u201cyou\u2019re not changing history,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re changing how we remember history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"419\" data-total-count=\"4018\">Some critics of Confederate monuments have called for them to be moved to museums, rather than destroyed, or even left in place and reinterpreted, to explain the context in which they were created. Mr. Grossman noted that most Confederate monuments were constructed in two periods: the 1890s, as Jim Crow was being established, and in the 1950s, during a period of mass Southern resistance to the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"media-100000005366179\" class=\"media photo embedded layout-large-horizontal media-100000005366179 ratio-tall\" role=\"group\" data-media-action=\"modal\" aria-label=\"media\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Photo<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"image\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-viewer-candidate\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/08\/16\/arts\/16HISTORY4\/16HISTORY4-master675.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-mediaviewer-src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/08\/16\/arts\/16HISTORY4\/16HISTORY4-superJumbo.jpg\" data-mediaviewer-caption=\"The statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Va.\" data-mediaviewer-credit=\"Julia Rendleman\/Associated Press\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-action-overlay\"><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption\"><span class=\"caption-text\">The statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Va.<\/span><span class=\"credit\"><span class=\"visually-hidden\">Credit<\/span>Julia Rendleman\/Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"246\" data-total-count=\"4264\">\u201cWe would not want to whitewash our history by pretending that Jim Crow and disenfranchisement or massive resistance to the civil rights movement never happened,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is the part of our history that these monuments testify to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"219\" data-total-count=\"4483\">How the events in Charlottesville, and Mr. Trump\u2019s comments, will affect the continuing debate over Confederate monuments remains to be seen. Mr. Witt, for one, suggested that white nationalist support might backfire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"190\" data-total-count=\"4673\">He noted that it was the 2015\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/18\/us\/church-attacked-in-charleston-south-carolina.html\">murder<\/a>\u00a0of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist that led to the removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"239\" data-total-count=\"4912\" data-node-uid=\"1\">\u201cThe amazing thing is that the president is doing more to endanger historical monuments than most of the protesters,\u201d he said. \u201cThe alt-right is producing a world where there is more pressure to remove monuments, rather than less.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Washington, Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson.\u00a0Credit\u00a0from left: Gilbert Charles Stuart; via Library of Congress; via Getty Images August 15, 2017 (nytimes.com) President Trump is not generally known as a student of history. But on Tuesday, during a combative exchange with reporters at Trump Tower in New York, he&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/08\/17\/historians-question-trumps-comments-confederate-monuments-jennifer-schuessler\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5827"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5829,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5827\/revisions\/5829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}