The Juxtaposition of Memory in Public Space

On a recent trip, I stopped for coffee in Monticello, Georgia, a small town with a population of around 2,500 about 60 miles southeast of Atlanta. As with many older, small towns, everything centered around the town square, a space with the courthouse, shops, an inn, and other businesses. The middle of the square, where the old courthouse once stood, had become a small park in the early 1900s with a large Confederate monument reaching towards the heavens in the middle of the green space. The Monticello chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) started raising the $2,800 for the monument in 1907 and unveiled it in 1910.

On Wednesday April 6, 1910, a crowd gathered in Monticello to witness the dedication of the monument that, according to The Monticello News, is “one of the grandest tokens of love and esteem in the beautiful hammered granite monument that could be erected or dedicated to the brave and valiant soldiers of the Confederacy.” The article continues by detailing the monument’s role as a reminder “to the beloved veterans” and a proclamation “to the coming generations as nothing else could [to] the manly and courageous part taken by those who wore the gray — of their loyalty and sacrifices that this glorious Southland might live on in the even tenor of its way.” These statements don’t come as a shock because the erection of monuments such as the…