Sun Editorial: What should replace Baltimore's Confederate monuments?
... We don’t presume to dictate what kind of art, if any, should replace the Confederate monuments and memorials that have been taken down recently in Maryland and elsewhere ...
Leaving the sites empty except for their pedestals might be a perfectly acceptable course to take for now, especially if the very absence of the monuments and memorials themselves prompt visitors to explore why they were removed and what message their presence originally conveyed. An empty site could by itself spark a conversation with viewers about all those whose impact on history has not been recognized in bronze or marble, given that women and minorities traditionally have been under-represented as subjects of historical monuments and memorials. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas and Thurgood Marshall have long been recognized as courageous, historically important figures deserving of recognition. But there are hundreds of other lesser known names whose toil in the trenches for liberty represented invaluable contributions to the struggle for equal rights ...
Public monuments and memorials are supposed to represent history we wish to venerate and values we seek to encourage, but in order to realize that purpose their meanings must be broadly acceptable to the people who have to live with them. We can’t change what happened in the past, but we can transform its meaning for the present, and rethinking our public monuments and memorials is as good a place as any to start ...
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-confederate-monuments-20171016-story.html
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