Monument Avenue — Bunk History

The Power of Empty Pedestals

After Governor Northam announced its removal, two Richmond historians reflect on the legacy of the Lee Monument.

by Gregory D. Smithers, Michael Dickinson via The Bitter Southerner on June 23, 2020

Richmond’s Confederate Monuments Were Used to Sell a Segregated Neighborhood

Real-estate developers used the statues to draw white buyers to a neighborhood where houses couldn't be sold “to any person of African descent.”

by Kevin M. Levin via The Atlantic on June 11, 2020

The True History of the South Is Not Being Erased

Taking down Confederate monuments helps confront the past, not obscure it.

by Garrett Epps via The Atlantic on June 11, 2017

What Richmond Has Gotten Right About Interpreting its Confederate History

Why hasn't Richmond faced the same controversies as New Orleans or Charlottesville?

by Kevin M. Levin via Smithsonian on May 18, 2017

Robert E. Lee Monument in Richmond, Virginia.

Why Honor Them?

In the decades after the Civil War, Black Americans warned of the dangers of Confederate monuments.

by Karen L. Cox via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 12, 2021

An image of the J. E. B. Stuart statue on Richmond's Monument Avenue being removed, its pedestal covered in graffiti.

All Statues Are Local

The Great Toppling of 2020 and the rebirth of civic imagination.

by Siddhartha Mitter via The Intercept on July 19, 2020

With a Brass Band Blaring, Artist Kehinde Wiley Goes Off to War with Confederate Statues

Kehinde Wiley unveils his new equestrian statue in Times Square. In December, it will be installed in Richmond, with those of Civil War generals nearby.

by Philip Kennicott via Washington Post on September 27, 2019

Ginger R. Stephens (center), a Virginia leader of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, joined other celebrants at a 2018 commemoration of Jefferson Davis’s birthday.

Yes, They’re Pro-Confederacy. But They’re Just the Nicest Ladies!

You can call the United Daughters of the Confederacy a lot of things. But racist? Why, some of their best friends…

by Anna Venarchik via The New Republic on December 5, 2023

A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which was previously on display at the U.S. Capitol, now resides at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond.

Richmond Tore Down its Statues — and Revealed a New Angle on History

After the 2020 removal of Confederate memorials, museums provide a place to confront the ugly past and find a way forward.

by Philip Kennicott via Washington Post on July 19, 2022

Cartoon depiction of a confederate statue, its hat falling off as it is lifted off a pedestal covered in graffiti about love and justice

After the Lost Cause

Why are politics so consumed with the past?

by Benjamin Wallace-Wells via The New Yorker on June 24, 2021

History As End

1619, 1776, and the politics of the past.

by Matthew Karp via Harper’s on June 8, 2021

Tuskegee history professor Frank Toland speaks to the gathered students at the base of the Confederate monument. (Photo by Jim Peppler; courtesy Alabama Department of Archives and History)

Black Protesters Have Been Rallying Against Confederate Statues for Generations

When Tuskegee student Sammy Younge, Jr., was murdered in 1966, his classmates focused their righteous anger on a local monument.

by Karen L. Cox via Smithsonian on April 12, 2021

Graffitied Robert E. Lee Statue with child playing basketball.

The New Monuments That America Needs

Every statue defends an idea about history, but what if those ideas are wrong?

by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on September 15, 2020

A man walking by graffiti on a white wall that reads "Why do we have to keep telling you black lives matter?"

What the Protesters Tagging Historic Sites Get Right About the Past

Places of memory up and down the East Coast also witnessed acts of resistance and oppression.

by Lindsay M. Chervinsky via Smithsonian on June 26, 2020

brought to you by

© Bunk History