Baltimore: ALL Confederate Statues Have Now Been Removed

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Even though Baltimore had many Confederate sympathizers, it was always within the United States of America, and not part of the Confederate States of America.

It makes no sense to have had Confederate statues there in public places.

It makes perfect sense if they're not really monuments to the Confederacy, but actually monuments to white supremacy.
Monuments of White Supremacy
The whole point of Confederate monuments is to celebrate white supremacy
History or Hate: America’s Controversial Monuments to White Supremacy
Confederate Statues Were Built To Further A 'White Supremacist Future'

It makes perfect sense if they're not really monuments to the Confederacy, but actually monuments to white supremacy.
Monuments of White Supremacy
The whole point of Confederate monuments is to celebrate white supremacy
History or Hate: America’s Controversial Monuments to White Supremacy
Confederate Statues Were Built To Further A 'White Supremacist Future'

Historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall notes that the UDC had a particular interest in the position of Southern (Confederate) women, with "a commitment to bolstering vanquished and disheartened veterans and keeping the memory of the dead alive. But it was also committed to immortalizing the heroism of Confederate women, whose valor, its leaders believed, had been every bit as important as men's". The UDC's methods were wide-ranging and ahead of their times:

UDC leaders were determined to assert women's cultural authority over virtually every representation of the region's past. This they did by lobbying for state archives and museums, national historic sites, and historic highways; compiling genealogies; interviewing former soldiers; writing history textbooks; and erecting monuments, which now moved triumphantly from cemeteries into town centers. More than half a century before women's history and public history emerged as fields of inquiry and action, the UDC, with other women's associations, strove to etch women's accomplishments into the historical record and to take history to the people, from the nursery and the fireside to the schoolhouse and the public square.

"The number of women's clubs devoted to filiopietism and history was staggering", says historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage, noting that women were much more likely to be involved in a variety of (historical) organizations than men, who devoted their energies to fraternal societies. Brundage notes that after women's suffrage came in 1920, the historical role of the women's organizations eroded.

After 1900 the UDC became an umbrella organization coordinating local memorial groups. The UDC women specialized in sponsoring local memorials. After 1945, they were active in placing historical markers along Southern highways.

...So are you for the defacing of this monument or against it? Assuming that that is a picture of an actual defacing, and not a Photoshop fake - it somehow looks too brightly red to be a photograph of an actual, unchanged spray-painting.







rmok"]The Marx monument in Highgate Cemetery, London:

The day after the death of the US sailor famously photographed kissing a stranger at the end of World War Two, a statue depicting the moment has been vandalised with graffiti reading "#MeToo".

Red spray paint was used to vandalise the "Unconditional Surrender" statue in Sarasota, Florida, on Monday, according to local police.

Police estimate the cost of the damage to be $1,000 (£765) "due to the large area that the graffiti covers".

For many the image of George Mendonsa kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman represents the joy felt across the US on the day Japan surrendered, ending World War Two.

However, in more recent years some have suggested the photo depicts an act of sexual assault, given the fact Mr Mendonsa did not have Ms Friedman's consent to kiss her.

In a 2005 interview for the Veteran's History Project, Greta Zimmer Friedman said it wasn't her choice to be kissed and that Mr Mendonsa "grabbed" her.

However, she made it clear the kiss was a "jubilant act" and "it was just an event of 'thank god the war is over.'"

After Ms Zimmer's death in 2016, her son told the New York Times his mother did not view the kiss negatively.

Sarasota Police Department shared the images of the defaced statue on social media, leading many to express their annoyance at the graffiti and the insinuation that the kiss was sexual assault.

"This statue represents a period in time that many today cannot relate to," one person wrote on Facebook. "The whole country was celebrating the end of a war - the whole country was together in that celebration."

Another commented: "Sexual assault is terrible but this was certainly not that situation. I can assure you this poor man who just died this week was not thinking of sexually assaulting a woman when he found out World War Two was over!"

Others suggested that the vandalism was disrespectful, given Mr Mendonsa's recent death.

However, others suggested the graffiti was justified.

One Facebook user urged the city to "take the statue down".

"It may be called 'Unconditional Surrender,' but the circumstance was 'Involuntary Surrender.' She didn't know that guy, he just grabbed her and kissed her," the commenter continued.

"[I'm] not saying this woman feels like a victim, but technically it was an unwanted, unsolicited sexual act. Plain and simple," another person wrote.

The City of Sarasota confirmed the graffiti was removed on Tuesday morning.

A marble statue memorializing the founder of the U.S. Army Airborne was set on fire Thursday in North Carolina, and museum officials believe it happened because vandals confused it for a Confederate memorial, according to the Dunn Daily Record and other media outlets.

Airborne founder Maj. Gen. William C. Lee shares the last name of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, but they are unrelated men who served different armies in different wars during different centuries.

Still, officials at the William C. Lee Airborne Museum in Dunn believe someone mistook the two for the same person, according to TV station WNCN.

“This is not a Civil War museum,” museum curator Mark Johnson told WNCN. “This is General William C. Lee from United States Army Airborne from World War II, so I was hurt and surprised that somebody would actually do this.”

Someone poured a flammable liquid over the white marble statue of Lee and set it on fire. The local fire department put out the flames, but the damage is done,” said the post.

“It scorched the statue mostly on the left side. You can see the burn marks in the marble where the jerk placed the remainder of the fuel container on the platform.”

Security footage is being reviewed and work to clean and repair the statue will begin soon, said the museum’s Facebook post.

The World War II museum is dedicated to the creation of airborne warfare, which started at Fort Bragg under William C. Lee’s command. The museum is run by a commission and is not state owned.

Hundreds of comments expressing anger have been posted on the museum’s Facebook page, including many who took the vandalism as an insult to patriotism and the nation’s military.

I do not judge children by what their parents did way back when.

This stands as a sad commentary about the historical illiteracy of these vandals.

Ya mean...ya mean....

that when I sneaked over to that movie theater in the middle of the night last night, and destroyed the marquee with a sledgehammer because it said "'Enter The Dragon';, starring Bruce Lee" …. that I made a mistake?

DARN!