Confederate Statues and Their Dirty Laundry

Abstract

AbstractSince 2015, America has witnessed a profound shift in aggregate public sentiments toward Confederate statues and symbols. That shift was keenly felt on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin (UT), culminating in the removal of four such statues in 2015 and 2017. However, an inquiry into their creation points to an equally significant shift in sentiments during the 1920s. UT's statues were commissioned in 1919 by George Littlefield, a Confederate veteran and university regent, as part of a larger war memorial. The ostensible purpose of that memorial was to commemorate veterans of both the Civil War and World War I. However, during the 1920s, a new generation of university leaders rejected Littlefield's design—and with it the assertion that the services of Civil and World War veterans were morally congruent and united in a common historical trajectory. This article tracks the ways in which they quietly and yet profoundly undermined the project, causing it to be significantly delayed and then extensively altered. Meanwhile, students and veterans improvised their own commemorative practices that were in stark contrast to the Confederate generation—the latter wanted to remember, while the former wanted to forget.