Jonathan P. Baird

During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, demonstrators, with ropes and chains, pulled down the statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike. It had been the only outdoor statue of a Confederate military leader in Washington D.C. For decades the statue had been controversial with many calling for its removal. The D.C. Council sought its removal in 1992 and Mayor Muriel Bowser had reached an agreement with congressional leaders in 2017 for that result. No date had been agreed to when the statue was dragged down.

It is revealing that the Trump regime wanted Gen. Pike’s statue re-installed. Pike had a checkered, less than honorable career. He was born in Boston in 1809 but left Massachusetts in 1831 to move to Arkansas. Pike was a lawyer and he played a role for the Confederacy in negotiating treaties with some Native American tribes. The Confederacy commissioned Pike a brigadier general in their army in August 1861. He was assigned to the Department of Indian Territory but his soldiers were accused of atrocities and he was accused of military incompetence. He had to resign from the Confederate Army in disgrace.

It is disputed whether Pike was a member of the Ku Klux Klan but his Klan sympathies are not historically disputed. In his writings Pike held racist views and advocated against Black suffrage. He believed white people should solely govern the country.

Pike thought slavery was a necessary evil and claimed slaves wouldn’t be able to hold any other job. He thought slaves were well treated by their masters. He admitted to owning his own slave. In 1858, he had joined with eleven others in signing a circular that encouraged people of Arkansas to expel free Blacks from the state.

This is the person the Trump regime wants to honor with a statue re-installation in Washington D.C. They are, apparently, not big on vetting. I was going to note that at least he wasn’t Grand Dragon of the Klan but there are historians who believe he was the Arkansas Grand Dragon.

Who a nation chooses to commemorate signifies who it deems essential to remember. The National Park Service is planning the Gen. Pike re-installation but this enterprise provides psychological sustenance and succor to white supremacists only. Not only does Gen. Pike not deserve any honor but it must never be forgotten that Confederates like Pike were traitors, not freedom fighters. They had sworn loyalty to the United States but then betrayed that loyalty.

The re-installation of the Gen. Pike statue is part of a propaganda campaign to launder slavery. Donald Trump just said the Smithsonian focused too much on “how bad slavery was” and not enough on the “brightness” of America.

I would submit that America has never come to grips with how evil slavery was and white supremacists have spent enormous energy constructing a false narrative in which they present themselves as victims fighting to preserve state’s rights.

The history of slavery remains poorly understood. Under the slave system, the South was a white supremacist stronghold with a deeply entrenched racial hierarchy which was designed to perpetuate racial inequality. That system was based on violence and control by any means necessary.

After a brief respite during Reconstruction, violence, lynchings and massacres were used to maintain white dominance. The South defended what it saw as its way of life. That way of life systematically excluded, disenfranchised, disempowered and marginalized black people.

Trump’s ambition is to rewrite America’s official history to reflect a glorified narrative. That means scrubbing out slavery. The Trump ideal picture of America is white wealthy men being financially successful. His DEI campaign is about censoring and disappearing minorities and women. He wants a narrative of progress with a happy ending.

In contrast to our American failure to confront slavery and racism is the German denazification effort. There are no monuments celebrating Nazis left in Germany. You will not find any Hitler statues there.

In her book, Learning from the Germans, Susan Neiman describes the multi-pronged German effort to acknowledge its crimes. In addition to a Holocaust Memorial, there are decentralized stumbling stones (small brass plaques recording the names and dates of birth and deportation of Jews, gays, Sinti and Roma who lived in the houses before which they stand). Over 107,000 stumbling stones have been laid across Europe in more than 30 European countries. They commemorate victims of Nazi terror and they constitute the largest decentralized monument in the world.

Bryan Stevenson has suggested that Southern buildings be renamed after white abolitionists and anti-lynching activists. That is far preferable to honoring slavery defenders like Gen. Pike. Taking down Pike’s statue was the right thing to do. His statue could be placed in an obscure museum. That is not erasing him. It is placing him in a well-earned location. He doesn’t deserve the honor of being remembered with a public monument.

What is most shocking about the Gen. Pike statue re-installation is the absence of shame. The project is not an innocent remembering of a benign past. Slavery is not something to recall with pride. Pike is at best an embarrassment and at worst an utter humiliation.

The Trump regime is attempting nothing less than the burial of actual history. They stand in the long historical tradition of white supremacists who have ruthlessly opposed the black vote by gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Just as happened after Reconstruction, the new redistricting is a form of racial engineering to dilute Black and Latino voting strength. Republicans are cracking and packing Black and Latino neighborhoods to reduce minority voting power. With a greatly weakened Voting Rights Act, they may well be able to get away with it.

This is what the lack of shame will get you.