Lunch & Learn: Exploring the Lost Cause through Virginia's Confederate Monuments 

I love all the "OMG he's giving different view points and the historical basis, then leaves us to think for ourselves"! Why does everyone want someone to tell them what to think? We need more sheepdogs round here.

He failed to mention the statue to Bill Bojangles Robinson.

Michelangelo's statue of David replaced Donatello's statue of Judith. Music, style of dress and what a society wants to display front center in i'ts own public parks changes with time.

I’m so glad that I live in an era where monuments to men who fought for principle are removed and monuments to a fentanyl addicted person who held a gun to a pregnant woman’s belly are erected. Progress.

Excellent talk

While I wholeheartedly agree with 99% of Mr. Coski's talk, I must vehemently disagree on a few points he made at the very end during the Q&A session; points where, I'd argue, he contradicts his earlier statements in ways that undermine his entire lecture. 1. The suggestion that monuments dedicated to Civil Rights figures and monuments to Figures of the Confederacy ought to occupy equal public space with equal prominence in order to "balance the landscape" is quite problematic if the goal is for monuments to be relevant and at the same time reflect the values and ideals of American society. It's problematic because to have monuments venerating upholders and defenders of white supremacy alongside monuments venerating those who fought to dismantle white supremacy and advance human rights sends the message, in effect, that these two causes and those who fought for them are worth honoring equally in our public space and in our discourse. As a society we ought not to put defenders of oppression on an equal footing with champions of human rights simply for the sake of not ruffling the feathers of people who have bought into the ahistorical Lost Cause mythos. That is not to say, however, that Mr. Coski needs to become an activist, but he does need to seriously think about the broader implications of his argument before he posits it in public. 2. Mr. Coski, at the end of the Q&A, seems to contradict all of his earlier points by suggesting that the Confederate monuments are worth keeping after all. Although he never said in his talk that they should be torn down, he does debunk many of the arguments given as to why they should stay. To reiterate, he said that the monuments teach little to no history and what little they do teach is erroneous; the monuments are largely anachronistic and reflective of an era in which white southerners sought to whitewash their sordid history; the monuments were meant to disenfranchise African-Americans from the historical narrative in a way that denies narrative's place in public life. Mr. Coski said that the monuments are not history, but relatively recent creations spurred by the need for whites to rewrite history to suit a self-serving narrative. He also rightly said that Confederate monuments were and are monuments to, and a product of, white supremacy. Since that is clearly the case, why should they remain in our public spaces giving marble and granite credence to neo-Confederates? Mr. Coski never gives a convincing argument as to why they should stay (and that might be due to time constraints). 3. Mr. Coski rightly said that African-Americans were unjustly denied a say in the monument erecting process due to white supremacists being in control of the decision-making processes. However, at the end of the Q&A he obliterates that point by saying that it is wrong for African-Americans today to attempt to rectify that injustice, even though they are operating on the same impulse that he said their ancestors would have acted on. He then likens the people calling for the removal of the monuments to the Soviets and the Taliban (a characterization which is both ahistorical and totally out of line given the context of the monuments in question and the historical grievances of African Americans within that context). Which is it? Are African-Americans justified in exercising the voice denied to their ancestors, or are they not? Mr. Coski seems to be conflicted in a way that works against his own credibility as to what he thinks is the right course of action that's in line with American values. His argument in this vein seems to be one of being uncomfortable with the imagery of toppling statues, but I'd be curious to know his thoughts on Iraqis toppling statues of Saddam, and Eastern Europeans toppling statues of Stalin and Lenin. Oppressed peoples dismantling honorific depictions of their oppressors is not akin to terrorist groups destroying ancient artifacts or Soviets defacing cathedrals. A more workable solution might be to keep the monuments in place and add markers and/or inscriptions explaining the historical context of white supremacy that brought them about, making sure to include a note about the Lost Cause mythos and why it's factually wrong.

Comparing it to the Taliban and the USSR is a bit far fetched. We're not talking about a 1984 rewriting history, but a removal of the celebration of slavery and those who fought for it. This isn't destroying the monuments to past Gods and ancient civilizations (as the Taliban). Most of them are less than 100 yrs old. They never should have gone up in the first place, but racism pushed out the views of the majority Black population at the time they went up. As for the USSR, it actually proves the point. The Soviets didn't destroy the monuments from the Absolutist past. However, at the end of the Soviet period, the freed people destroyed the monuments of the Soviet dictatorship. It's the same thing. It's trying to remove the glorification of those who oppress others to gain power in society.

Some people are offended by Malcolm X day too...

Create a private park, take all the confederate monuments and put them there. These homages to traitors and slavemongers don't belong in public spaces.

I don't understand the average southerner-yeoman farmer, ordinary non-slaveholder- at that time would fight for rich plantation owners' preserving slavery. Unless they aspired to be slave holders themselves.

The mistake the Union made was in not executing every single Confederate who fought against the Union or who helped those who fought against the United States of America. Firing squad or rope.

northern abolitionists lived off Slavery as much as southern planters. northern bankers made loans, northern insurance companies underwrote activities, northern textile mills bought slave cotton, northerners ate slave sugar and smoked slave Tabacco and before 1808, slave ships built and crewed by northerners transported slaves into the United States. Maybe the war happened because the guilty feeling of northern abolitionists and indignation of southern slavers at the hypocrisy of the abolitionists. And, what's crazy is that most people today are decedents of post-bellum immigrants who had nothing to do with slavery and just want to get on with life.

I’m fairly ambivalent on the issue of monuments but I think that expecting them to be an objective, dry statement of facts is not really reasonable. Monuments are almost always an artifact of the attempt to control the narrative after the historical event either in direct or anticipated opposition to that narrative. I consider the change in the narrative via revision to be part of the historical event itself. Any instructional text or historical record consists of not only its original text but also all subsequent revisions to that text. The revision history is often as educational as the current content of the work because it allows the reader to see how and why the content changed. That is far more useful than just a random chronological snapshot of the content at some particular point in time. The monuments are works of art regardless of the interpretation by a viewer or even the intent of the person who erected the monument. Catholicism is not recognized by most people as an official legal authority today as it was in the time of Da Vinci but people still recognize the skill, talent, and effort that went into painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. If that can be viewed and appreciated as an objective work of art given the human suffering that the Catholic Church can be proven factually to have caused during its history then a sculpture can be appreciated for the artistic effort that was expended in its creation by an artist that may have cared about nothing more than the aesthetic and artistic appeal of the sculpture itself. Actually, destroying or removing a monument lets those that erected it off the hook historically. Adding a new marker to the monument correcting the record, giving accurate historical context, and providing factual evidence to support the update to the monument utilizes the art and the original information as a true teaching tool that imparts the lessons learned through both the original event and the subsequent research. It should not be done in a hateful or vengeful way, however. We should value the truth and our ability to find it despite all attempts at obfuscation over petty revenge that only prolongs hostility and never solves it.

I am a Southerner who entirely supports taking down these statues. As a people, north or south, we belong to a sick, perverse and vile culture no longer worthy of the great men who lived in our past. They would certainly all be ashamed to be associated with any aspect of what we have become. We should replace those old statues with new ones to those people who are great today so that when our civilization soon collapses future archeologists will dig them out of the dirt first, because statues to those who destroy civilizations are always on top of the rest of the rubble and those who created it are always at the bottom.

This war was not a civil war; CSA vs USA, two different countries, one similar culture. Lincoln never wished to abolish slavery until he was losing the war. Most of these stories are lies.

Secession had many cause, the war, which should be viewed as a separate thing, also had about ten main causes. There was a venal predatory aspect to northern aims regarding the South; the war was also a huge thing affecting nearly every Southerner. Due to these things, the monuments should be viewed sympathetically. The current pc trend is to scream 'white supremacy' or 'racism' but that is too much of a one dimensional way of seeing things. The monuments represent honor, loyalty to home, courage under fire, sacrifice.

It is important to separate the differences between the Deep South and their secessions and VA NC TN and AR. Those four states DID NOT SECEDE with the Deep South. They were solidly in the Union and had rejected secession. You will find no defense of slavery in their secession declarations, but you will find Constitutional concerns and a rejection of the expanded federal power over reach when war and blockade of the Deep South was initiated by Lincoln AND those four states were being forced to participate. Not until then did they secede...and justly IMO. And noted by legal experts of the era, the Constitution was silent on Secession.. but the Virginia Ratification of the Constitution wasn't....was it? And curiously, no objections to RI VA NY all had "right to resume" language in their ratifications AND THERE WAS NO DEBATE OR OBJECTION... remarkable, huh? If it was "unconstitutional" as you hold, the ratifications would have been rejected, according to your version of history.