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struggle4progress

(118,039 posts)
Fri Jun 12, 2020, 12:36 AM Jun 2020

Richmond's monuments used to sell a segregated neighborhood

JUNE 11, 2020
Kevin M. Levin

On May 29, 1890, roughly 150,000 people gathered for the dedication of the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond. It was an opportunity to celebrate a man who many believed embodied the virtues of the old South, the “Christian Warrior” who bravely fought to the bitter end for the Confederacy’s Lost Cause. The Richmond industrialist and former Confederate staff officer Archer Anderson predicted that the monument would continue to teach “generations yet unborn,” and that it would “stand as the embodiment of a brave and virtuous people’s ideal leader!”

It was also an opportunity to showcase a new real-estate development that included wide boulevards and Monument Avenue itself—a divided boulevard, 140 feet wide, featuring parallel rows of trees along its center and another row lining the housefronts. The neighborhood was developed exclusively for white residents. Eventually, the avenue would feature monuments to Lee, “Stonewall” Jackson, and J. E. B. Stuart; to Confederate President Jefferson Davis; and to the Confederate official Matthew Fontaine Maury.

The Confederate monuments dedicated throughout the South from 1880 to 1930 were never intended to be passive commemorations of a dead past; rather, they helped do the work of justifying segregation and relegating African Americans to second-class status. Monument Avenue was unique in this regard. While most monuments were added to public spaces such as courthouse squares, parks, and intersections, Monument Avenue was conceived as part of the initial plans for the development of the city’s West End neighborhood—a neighborhood that explicitly barred black Richmonders ...

Throughout the development of the neighborhood, real-estate companies used the monuments to entice buyers. In 1913, the Greater Richmond Realty Company took out an ad in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that included an illustration of the proposed Jackson monument under the headline: “Stuart, Lee, Davis, Have Already Been Honored. No Longer Neglect Jackson.” The depiction of the intersection along with a tree-lined field in the background made it easier for potential buyers to envision their home overlooking the Confederate general. The ad implied that Jackson would not be fully honored until all the lots were claimed and occupied ...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/its-not-just-the-monuments/612940/

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