An Archaeologist Analyzes the Confederate Monument Near His Home
By: Andrew Tharler
Tags: Archaeology, Confederate Monuments, Past Is Prologue, Monuments, History

Fig. 9. Base of the Confederate monument showing the dates of the Civil War. Photo courtesy of the author.

The timing of the Confederate monument’s construction is curious. While the east face notes its dedication in 1924, the north side supplies the dates of the Civil War (1861–1865) (fig. 9). We learn that the Confederate monument was erected 59 years after the fall of the Confederacy. By contrast, the World War I memorial at the other end of the plaza was built in 1921, only two years after the war it commemorates. Why did a Civil War monument suddenly appear in 1924?

Most Confederate statues were not built in an outpouring of national grief immediately after the Civil War, but many decades later in the 20th century.

It is telling that, at the time, Durham was home to one of the country’s most prosperous Black communities. The historic district of Hayti and Black Wall Street downtown boasted hundreds of businesses by the early 20th century, including the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the largest and most successful Black-owned company in the United States. In 1910, Booker T. Washington visited Durham and deemed it “a city of Negro enterprises.”

Fig. 10. Locations of Black Wall Street and Confederate Soldiers Monument in Durham. Photo modified from Google Earth.

Black Wall Street stretches across Parrish Street, half a block from the courthouse, or about a 45-second walk (fig. 10). This proximity is alarming. When Durham’s Black community built a home downtown, the Confederate monument moved in next door. In 1924, its presence was a menacing reminder from Durham officials that Black success in American business bought them no power under American law. By considering the historical circumstances and spatial context of the monument’s construction, we can detect in the white community’s effort to project power an underlying fear of its Black neighbors.

This phenomenon was not confined to Durham. Most Confederate statues were not built in an outpouring of national grief immediately after the Civil War, but many decades later in the 20th century. It is frequently noted that their construction surged at two points: the early 1900s and the 1960s, coinciding first with the passage of Jim Crow laws and rise of racial terror under the KKK and later with the civil rights movement (fig. 11).

Fig. 11. Histogram showing peaks in Confederate monument construction. Graph: SPLC

Viewed in this context, Confederate monuments are less shrines to the war dead than instruments of targeted intimidation. Whereas Durham’s World War I and World War II memorials both feature olive branches in gestures of peace, the Confederate monument prominently displays weaponry (fig. 12).

Fig. 12. Symbols of peace on the World War I and World War II memorials (top) and militaristic imagery on the Confederate monument (bottom). Photos courtesy of the author.

The north and south sides of the base support stacks of cannonballs, and the uniformed Confederate soldier on the pedestal faces Black Wall Street and brandishes a rifle, gripping the barrel with both hands and resting the butt at his feet. Footage of the 2017 protest shows that this statue crumpled on impact when it was pulled to the ground. It turns out that Durham’s tax dollars had bought the city not a unique artistic production, but a frail sheet of molded bronze. Classical archaeologists have spent too much time with mold-made sculptures to let this slide. We’ve puzzled through descriptions of the lost wax technique, compared countless bronze limbs and torsos, and catalogued too many identical terrra-cotta figurines (fig. 13).

Molds facilitated the mass production of Confederate soldier statues, allowing companies to fabricate them cheaply, quickly, and on a vast scale, the same way plastic action figures are made today. These legions of indistinguishable bronzes were rapidly deployed in cities across the South, garrisoned in courthouses, parks, and boulevards. Durham ordered its monument from the McNeel Marble Company. A nearly identical memorial was dedicated in Kinston, North Carolina, on the very same day, May 10, 1924 (fig. 13).

Fig. 13. Bronze sculptures cast from similar molds. Several molds were combined to create the different parts of a single statue, and other modifications could be made during the production process to render distinct features and details. Ancient Greek Riace Warriors (left); Confederate monuments in Kinston, North Carolina (center), and Durham, North Carolina (right). Photos: Alexander van Loon/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0); Craig Swain via HMdb; DocSouth

If monuments remind us of our past, what does the Confederate monument want us to remember? The inscription on the north face makes it clear: “IN MEMORY OF / ‘THE BOYS WHO / WORE THE GRAY’” (fig. 14). The tone is sentimental and nostalgic, conjuring visions of uniformed adolescents marching to battles already lost. What were these anonymous boys fighting for?

Fig. 14. Confederate monument (left); Vietnam and Korean War Monument (right). Photos courtesy of the author.

The monument to the Vietnam and Korean wars claims that their soldiers “DIED WHILE SERVING / THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / AND MANKIND BY / DEFENDING FREEDOM” (fig. 14). By contrast, the Confederate Soldiers Monument offers no reason for their sacrifice.³ However, there are clues. The seal of the Confederate States carved just above the “boys in gray” inscription features a representation of George Washington on horseback (fig. 15).

Fig. 15. Seal of the Confederate States. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Washington, of course, served as the Union’s first president and died in 1799. He has no historical connection to the Confederacy. The use of his image, then, serves an ideological purpose. It links the Civil and Revolutionary wars, aligning the Confederate cause with the birth of the nation. The Civil War is cast as yet another rebellion against tyranny, the South’s war of independence. Archaeologists should recognize this strategy. Repressive regimes have always cloaked their reforms in symbols of tradition, couching radical changes in familiar patriotic terms.

The Confederate monument not only hides the cause of the war, it lies about the outcome.

Fig. 16. Ara Pacis (left) with detail of the Aeneas panel (right). Photos: Rabax63/Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Miguel Hermoso Cuesta/Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

This is why Augustus blanketed Rome with images of Aeneas, the city’s legendary founder, while simultaneously dismantling its republican institutions (fig. 16). Two thousands years later, Mussolini decorated his explicitly fascist Monument to Victory in Bolzano, Italy, with the faces of heroes from the First World War, making them martyrs for a cause they never championed (fig. 17).⁴ What the Confederate monument doesn’t tell us is that, in his will, Washington ultimately freed his slaves. The boys in gray fought to keep theirs.

Fig. 17. Mussolini’s Monument to Victory (left). Bust of Cesare Battisti (right), who was executed by Austro-Hungarian forces during World War I. Mussolini included Battisti’s image in the monument over the objections of his widow. Photos: Sailko/Wikimedia (CC BY 3.0); Wolfgang Moroder/Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Confederate monument not only hides the cause of the war, it lies about the outcome. On the west side of the square, the World War I memorial features a shield of stars and stripes, and the World War II memorial displays a bald eagle (fig. 18).

Fig. 18. Traditional American symbols around the courthouse. Photos courtesy of the author.

Another bald eagle is perched atop the memorial to the Vietnam and Korean wars, and still others guard the architrave of the courthouse. Although built at different times, these monuments work in concert to promote a unified program of patriotic American iconography. But in another telling contrast, there is not a single symbol of the United States on the Confederate monument.

Toppling the statue did not erase history; the monument has been erasing history all on its own for nearly 100 years.

Fig. 19. Symbols on the Confederate monument. Photos courtesy of the author.

The north side of the plinth shows the seal of the Confederacy, the east and west faces both display the Confederate national and battle flags, and the south face is marked with the CSA monogram, Confederate States of America (fig. 19). Confederate symbols are visible at every angle. To modern eyes, this iconography might suggest that the monument was raised during the period of secession. But we already know that it was built in 1924. The monument offers no indication that the Confederacy had been defeated in the previous century. There are no gestures toward reconciliation or unity, only signs of defiance. Sixty years after the war, a powerful circle in Durham either believed they were still living in a Confederate state or tried hard to make it look like one.