In a town in West Michigan, residents are trying to decide: Is Allendale Township’s Civil War statue an ode to the end of the war and the freedom it secured, or is it a reminder of slavery and the injustice over which it began?
The statue in Allendale depicts a Confederate solider and a Union solider standing back to back with a young slave between them. The slave is bending down to pick up a pamphlet that announces the abolition of slavery. Critics of the monument argue it is racist since the slave is bending down toward the feet of two white men. They also take issue with the fact that the Confederate solider is portrayed as the Union soldier’s equal.
It’s a “disgrace,” said Sonja Fryer, a Wyoming, Michigan, music teacher who organized the protests against the memorial, according to the Detroit News. “We should have nothing to do with the Confederacy,” she said.
The artist who created the statue, however, disagrees. Joyce Sweers argued that the focal point of the memorial is not the Confederate soldier, but the pamphlet announcing the abolition of slavery. And tearing down the statue or removing it from Allendale’s park would be a disservice to the freedom and democratic process the statue celebrates, she said.
“If the statue is removed, we will be gift-wrapping our soul to the mob rule, compromising our freedoms,” she wrote in a letter to Allendale’s board of trustees. “This is no longer about the cement and the rebar that stands in the park.”
This debate is not unique to Allendale. It’s happening across the country — and not just over Civil War statues, but over all historical emblems with which the nation’s iconoclasts disagree. Any association with America’s past sins is a problem, according to the Left, and must be removed entirely.
People such as Sweers see things differently. Slavery was evil, as were the Confederacy and all other institutions that sought to preserve it, which is why America fought a war to end it and give all Americans, regardless of skin color, the opportunities and freedoms our founding documents swore to protect.
Allendale has only one statue. But it tells two very different stories depending on who you ask. And the story that wins will have the power to determine the future, which is what this debate has always been about anyways.
