This Is How You Do It
Oklahoma City's Art Commission Deserves Credit for Adding "Context" to it's "Land Run" Monument. It Beats Removing Statues and Erasing History, like Virginia and Congress. But Don't Sugarcoat It.
My adopted Commonwealth of Virginia, the home of our nation’s leading founders and framers, with names like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, “Light Horse” Harry Lee, Patrick Henry, and James Monroe, has led the nation more recently in one very ignominious category - removing “offending” statues and names of military installations.
Why? Because Virginia, at our founding the nation’s most populist state, served briefly as the capital - the cradle - of the Confederacy. Over half of all Civil War battles were fought here, from the first at Manassas to Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomatox Courthouse.
It wasn’t long ago that you could drive through the state capitol of Richmond and witness no shortage of monuments to Virginia’s Confederate “heroes.” Robert E. Lee never wanted a Confederate monument. Jefferson Davis. AP Hill. And not just Richmond. A ferry named after Confederate Gen. Jubal Early that crossed the legendary Potomac River from near Leesburg to White’s Ferry, Maryland, shut down a few years ago over a contract dispute. But those days - and most of those monuments - are now gone.
A certain badly interpreted, if not horrifically tragic, event from 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, sparked by a local decision to relocate a statue of Robert E. Lee from a city park, provided momentum.
You can still find a towering statue of Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson near the site at the Manassas National Battlefield Park in northern Virginia, where he earned that moniker during the Civil War’s first major skirmish in the Spring of 1861. Rallying his Georgia troops, Gen. Bernard Bee pointed to Jackson. “Look, there stands Jackson, like a stone wall. Rally ‘round the Virginians!” Bee died shortly thereafter, but his words lived on immortally. Confederates, led by General P.G.T. Beauregard and reinforced by General Joseph E. Johnston, won the day. I don’t see the US Park Service removing Jackson’s monument - it’s the first stop for Park Service interpreters on their guided tours, with a grand view of the battlefield - but give it time.
Jackson’s home in Lexington, Virginia, is a must-visit if you travel along I-81 through the legendary Shenandoah Valley, once the “breadbasket” of the Confederacy. Not far from I-95 on the other side of the Commonwealth, you will find signs leading you to where Jackson’s severed left arm is buried (not really, apparently), following the Battle of Chancellorsville, near Fredricksburg, the height of the Confederacy’s military prowess. Seriously. Jackson died of Pneumonia not long after that battle, as did the Confederacy’s fortunes.
But I digress. Other states are experiencing similar pangs. Including my home state of Oklahoma, home of land runs during the late 19th century before it became our 46th state in 1907.
What was a “land run?” After most Oklahoma Indian Territory sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War, Congress confiscated their lands (but not their governments, a story for another day) and opened them up for settlement, starting in 1889 (a couple more followed). A terrific movie starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Far and Away, took much artistic license with Oklahoma’s landmark event. My Scots-Irish soul stirs at its mere mention.
How wedded were Oklahoma’s civilized tribes to the Confederacy? Consider: The last Confederate General to surrender wasn’t Lee or Johnston. It was Stand Watie, a Cherokee Indian leader from. . . wait for it . . . Oklahoma, nearly three months after Johnston’s and Lee’s capitulations.
Fast forward many years later. Oklahomans erect a magnificent statue to honor the land runs that settled their state and sent it on the path to statehood and its integration into American society at a reinvigorated “Bricktown” section of downtown Oklahoma City.
From Tuesday’s Daily Oklahoman:
A push to include Indigenous perspectives alongside the Oklahoma Centennial Land Run monument is one step closer to fruition.
A report was presented to the Oklahoma City Arts Commission Monday with the conclusion the monument is one-sided and “hurtful” to Oklahoma’s Indigenous communities. The report recommends the city request submission from artists for “a work of art and information” to provide visitors the chance to see the other side of the story.
Plans also include a “major art and cultural installation” in a later phase, according to city documents.
“This space and this report is extremely important for Indigenous representation,” said Anita Fields who helped compile the report. Fields is Osage and Muscogee. “Because there are very few landmarks, memorials or anything of that speaking to ... the true history of what happened during the land run,” she said.
I’m okay with this. Instead of trying to remove a monument to honor what may be Oklahoma’s most significant founding event, well-meaning people seek to add context to include native Americans, many of whom were expulsed from eastern lands they possessed before America’s founding, via Andrew Jackson’s murderous “Trail of Tears.”
Funny, none of this - the “Trail of Tears” or the Indian tribes’ allegiance to the Confederacy - or the fact that many embraced slavery - is mentioned in this story. Or their plans to “interpret” the site with that vital information.
I have a suggestion. If we’re going to have “Indigenous representation,” let’s include their role and critical events in making the land runs possible.
Let’s see a statue of Confederate General Albert Pike successfully recruiting aggrieved Indian tribal leaders to join the “lost cause.”
Let’s include a statue of Confederate General and Cherokee leader Stand Watie.
Let’s include a monument to slaves of Indian tribes that includes many African Americans, especially among the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations.
Let’s tell it all. Openly. Honestly. It was the Indian tribes’ embrace of the Confederacy that made the land runs possible. There is no sugarcoating that.
Virginia, especially Richmond, should have done the same. That’s true of other counties in my adopted Commonwealth that featured monuments to Confederates on county courthouse grounds. Woke Loudoun County got rid of theirs, as did Abington. Winchester, Virginia, still has theirs.
A few years ago, I vaguely remember walking through beautiful downtown Annapolis, Maryland, home of the Naval Academy and its state capital. Voters there had recently elected Robert Ehrlich, its first GOP governor since Spiro T. Agnew. I spotted him playing ball with his young son on the lawn of the governor’s mansion, a veritable fishbowl, as we strolled by on our way to the Capitol building.
I recall spotting a statue of former Supreme Court Chief Justice and Maryland native Roger Taney. I recall telling my guests and family the sordid history of Taney’s authorship of the terrible “Dred Scott” decision. What an excellent opportunity to teach history.
That statue is now gone. A similar statue inside the US Capitol is now being removed. On my longer Capitol tours, I used to stop by that statue in the original Supreme Court chamber to revisit this critical, if painful, history. No longer, apparently. I’m now denied an opportunity to use that occasion to share an important history lesson.
Interestingly, you can still find statues of Confederate President (and former Mississippi US Senator and Secretary of War) Jefferson Davis and his Vice President Alexander Stephens in the US Capitol’s Statuary Hall, the “old” House chamber. I always point them out and share them in a historical context. Stephens and other former Confederate officials, including General Johnston, would serve as Members of Congress. So much nuance.
So I give credit to the Oklahoma City Arts Commission. At least they are open to adding historical context. Just make sure it adds it all and isn’t the reinvention of history - propaganda - many are seeking to impose on us.
Yes, please! All of it.