Thread by @SteveSchmidtSES

“Times they are a changing’” Robert E. Lee became an American when I was four years old on August 5th, 1975. Upon being made an American for a second time, through the restoration of the birthright he repudiated with treason ,105 years after his death, President Ford said this 👇

“ General Lee’s character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride”. The removal of the Lee statue from Monument Blvd isn’t an erasure of history. It is a remembrance of it. We have

arrived at a settling of the record. When the cornerstone for the monument was laid Col. Charles Marshall, a Lee adjutant said Lee was a defender of the Constitution and the Union as it was before Lincoln destroyed it. He also spoke at the dedication of Grant’s monument in

NYC. He drafted Lee’s acceptance of unconditional surrender and was present at Appomattox. His nephew George would go on to be the one man whom FDR dared not address by his first name. General Marshall helped save the world, more than once. History is complicated. The American

story is a reality, not a myth. It should be faced head on. Reconciliation was paid for ultimately by black suffering. The North looked away and abandoned the overwhelming majority of black men and women (Freedmen) to a violent Southern Apartheid state that teemed with

Lawlessness, oppression and hatred. In 1910, the population of the United States stood at 92 million people. More than 90% of blacks lived in the South. The “Great Migration” north, of millions of Black Americans would last from 1915 to 1970. None of this was taught in school.

Black’s moving North collided with the greatest mass of immigrants in world history, mostly European, who arrived in the US largely between 1870 and 1920. This was the story taught in school. It was my family history but it was only a fraction of the American story. Oppression

was the meaning of the Lee Monument. Politeness dictated an exculpatory group think among whites who wanted to pretend that honor and dignity were the declaration being made by the 40 ft high marble Lee astride his faithful Traveller in the middle of the physical heart and

emotional soul of the fallen South. The telling of lies is always found in a societies monuments. When ignorance erodes any trace of memory it becomes possible to declare that history demands the lie be made sacred and indisputable. Yet history seems to be a relentless pursuer.

There it fell. In Richmond. In 2021, one of the last great monuments to injustice, slavery, treason, totalitarianism, oppression and violence that stood in America was toppled. Along with it came the shattering of the thin glass of the “Lost Cause Myth” that built the monument

to begin with. History’s judgements comes slowly. Yet, come they do.