Monuments and Collective Memory
I’ve long appreciated the First World War memorials to which the Czechs have added the names of Second World War dead, victims of fascism and communism, and in one case, the dead from UN service. Makes good use of existing monuments. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument in front of the old Kane County Courthouse in …
Continue reading “Kane County, Illinois’ Multipurpose War Memorial”
When I went to Charleston for the first time late last year, I had no real visual idea of the city. I did expect to find Civil War memorials of some kind, even if they were only the ghosts of standing confederate soldiers or a Confederate general atop his stallion that had recently been removed. …
Unveiled in 1909, the statue of a Confederate private in Nashville’s Centennial Park is not some unknown soldier, but rather according to the Smithsonian, it represents Tennessee’s own Confederate boy hero, Sam Davis. 1909 must have been a busy year for Confederate boy-hero statues in Nashville, because two were unveiled that year, the second on …
Continue reading “Nashville’s Very Own Confederate Private Statue”
The Tennessee state house is an imposing Greek Revival building, sitting as it does atop a hill in Nashville. Like other state capitols and courthouses across the country, its lawn is dotted with monuments. They include statues of two of Tennessee’s three presidents: a bronze equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson (it is one of three …
“Oh, home of tears, but let her bear this blazoned to the end of time: No nation rose so white and fair, none fell so pure of crime.” So reads an inscription on a Confederate soldier statue unveiled in 1911 on the lawn of the Cooke County courthouse in Gainesville, Texas. It is among many …
Continue reading “Historic Monuments as Sites of Nationalist Tension”
Of Monuments and Memory