While in Pretoria, one morning the
newpaper in the lobby had a front page story on a recurring
controversy concerning the display of the South
African flag from the years of Apartheid. Following its
retirement in 1994 the flag has been controversial within South
Africa, with some people viewing it as historic and a symbol of
Afrikaner heritage while others view it as a symbol of apartheid and
of white supremacy.
Today, in my home in North Carolina, the same issues land on
the front page. In our current public debate about civil war
statues, I wonder if we could learn from the South African example.
In their government building complex in Pretoria, they erected a
statue
of Nelson Mandela and put it in the center of what had been a
space dedicated to the prior, apartheid state. So the full history
of the country is on display. We might do something similar here on
our NC Capitol grounds.
The NC Capitol still
houses the offices of the Governor, but most of the building and
grounds are more of a museum, conveniently located across the street
from the NC Museum of History.
Those who argue the civil war statues belong in a museum pretty much
already have that on the capitol grounds. And yet because those
statues represent only one view of history, as “written” by the
victors of the Jim Crow era, the story is incomplete, one sided, and
rife with controversy.
In Montgomery,
Alabama the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice provides a source of
inspiration for what might be done on the NC Capitol grounds to
provide a fuller version of our history. What if we left some, most,
or even all the existing monuments on the grounds, but added
memorials representing the rest of our legacy? There are various
ways this could be done. One way would be to take advantage of the
offer from Alabama. The memorial structure on the center of their
site is constructed of over 800 corten steel monuments, one for each
county in the United States where a racial terror lynching took
place. The names of the lynching victims are engraved on the columns.
The memorial is more than a static monument. In the six-acre park
surrounding the memorial is a field of identical monuments, waiting
to be claimed and installed in the counties they represent. Over
time, the national memorial will serve as a report on which parts of
the country have confronted the truth of this terror and which have
not.
We could have one or
more (ie a copy for each NC county where lynchings occurred)
monuments added to the capitol grounds. It would be a powerful
statement and would allow us to live out our state motto: Esse quam
videri or “To be, rather than to seem.” This could be linked to
a permanent display in the history museum.
South Africa went
through a truth and reconciliation process, led by Bishop Desmond
Tutu, after Mandela ascended to the presidency and the country began
to confront the full truth of its history. North Carolina could
demonstrate real national leadership in a thoughtful and deliberate
process that deals directly with our history and uses the capitol
grounds as a visible indication of our progress.
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