Albert Pike Statue, And Its Removal
Introduction
America erects several statues and monuments as a way of preserving historical memories. These statues get erected in different parts of the cities for those considered to have played significant roles in the nation’s history. The memories include those of remarkable soldiers that fought past wars. Albert Spike is one of the contributors of the past whose contributions are still kept alive. His statue, before it was the removal, stood at the Judiciary Square. Spike, who was initially a poet and a lawyer, got the opportunity to join the army. He was in charge of the Native American Army but later forced was to resign when the army members misbehaved. Being that he was a racist, several legal attempts existed to have his statue removed. The efforts were unsuccessful until the recent time when protestors gathered around and pulled it down. The existence of Spike’s statue in Judicial Square passed a negative message to the black Americans. Therefore, statues and monuments in America are erected not to preserve history but to give a message.
Statement of Ethics
While conducting the study, I remained open and honest with the individuals I found at the place regarding what I was doing. I ensured that my field activity meant no harm to any of them. Lastly, I maintained both ethical and professional relationship with everyone during the study. My challenge, however, was that some people often wanted to engage me on personal matters.
History of the Statue
Albert Pike evokes a lot of memories each time his name gets mentioned. He is one of those remembered by Americans for his contribution to the Confederacy. Pike, who lived between 1809 and 1891, was among the Confederate soldiers. He is known to be an accomplished poet, author, soldier, jurist, scholar, philosopher, and philanthropist. On the other hand, he was equally a racist that discriminated between the whites and blacks. He was both born and raised in Massachusetts. Before he decided to focus on territories, he worked as a schoolteacher. When he traveled to Mexico, Pike tried different adventures on the Westside and finally settled in Arkansas. There, he operated as a self-taught lawyer and handled clients majorly from the American Indians. After some time, Pike secured an opportunity and wrote for the Southern newspapers. Afterward, he married a wealthier wife, acquired the funds needed, and purchased the Arkansas Advocate.
On the side of politics, Pike was a strict nativist. He decided to become part of the Know-Nothing Party. There he advocated for the use of slavery in farms and regarded it as resourceful than farm labor (Shulz, n.d). This party advocated for anti-immigrant moves, and he moved out of the party when he realized that the party overly supported slavery, and everything became intense. When the Civil war broke out, Pike supported the Confederacy and later got promoted to the position of brigadier general in its army. He probably never was a good soldier. His duty was to control Native Americans’ regiment but failed to manage them during the battle of the pea Ridge effectively. It resulted in some soldiers under his command committing atrocities, especially to the fallen Union soldiers. The clash with his seniors continued in Richmond, and as a result, Pike got chastised, making him resign from his position.
After the war, Pike returned to his previous work as a lawyer and a writer. He later relocated to Washington, where he joined and fully participated in Freemasonry. Pike often wrote on Masonic topics and served in the Supreme Council in the Southern Jurisdiction as a Grand Commander. Since the icon portrayed him as a Freemason and not a military, Congress allowed its construction (Shulz, n.d). These Masonic activities prompted the erection of his statue for a memorial in the year 1901. The Masons paid all the costs of constructing the statute. However, several of these monuments are owned and protected by state laws, especially in the states that formally belonged to the Confederates (“Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy,” n.d). The icon on its own portrayed Pike as a Freemason and not as a soldier. It is the reason behind Congress’ permission allowing the erection of the statue. Currently, there is a museum in place in his honor and also to keep his work of writing.
Reception and Interpretation of the Statue
According to Parks (2017), the intention behind memorials’ erection does not seem to be about honoring the fallen military and heroes, but mainly to advance the belief in white supremacy and pass a message to any race that is not originally American. If possible, memories carried on the monuments were supposed to result in certain ethnogenesis where black Americans view themselves as another ethnic group (Brown et al., 2020). Currently, a considerable number of cities are in the process of removing the statues, while some have removed them already. The president felt that this kind of move is ripping the culture and record of the nation apart. Other groups, such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, fight to protect such monuments, holding a significant aspect of history. A leader from the group has gone ahead to write a letter that condemned the brutality and racism witnessed in Charlottesville yet, at the same time, criticized the hatred leveled against the ancestors who he considers glorious. According to him, the radical leftists are merely looking for a way to erase American history. The letter from that group leader addressed to the compatriots got signed one day before the president gave the considered harsh press conference. In the meeting, Donald Trump leveled accusations against the so-called “alt-left.” The comments attracted criticisms from different sectors such as the nonprofits, business leaders, and some members of the president’s and others.
However, several historians believe that the debates over the preservation of the statues do not make sense, especially bearing in mind the timing during which they got erected. A particular professor of history from the University of Chicago noted that several individuals concerned with building the memorial were not automatically doing so for the sake of history. They instead were doing so to pass a message of white supremacist future (Parks, 2017). The Southern Poverty Law Center has published the most current research on Confederate monuments and statues that exist countrywide. The finding is that there is a considerable rise in the number of constructions by double. The times that experience this high rise are the same periods of the very high tension of civil rights. In the early 1990s, the American government did not support interracial families. It led to several states enacting laws that were against miscegenation. The government also officially implemented the legal procedures that supported the Jim Crow segregation of races (Brown et al., 2020). The move was to disenfranchise black Americans. The civil rights, later in the middle part of the century, vehemently fought back the racial discrimination. According to the director who works with the American Historical Association, the number of memorials erected served to pass some message. He believes that the monuments were supposed to give legitimate attire for the white supremacy. The view is that there is no reason at all of erecting certain statues in the cities.
The existence of the confederate statue at the Judiciary Square in itself passed a strong message. A judiciary is a place where everyone expects to find justice. Criminals expect that if they have to face charges, then the judgment must be a fair one. The wronged ones also believe that their rights can only get served through a fair judicial system. Having a Confederate statue right in the place where there is an expectation of justice passes heavy negative messages to the blacks in America and a weak social construction towards them (Brown et al., 2020). They feel that judgment only belongs to the whites in the courts of law. On another view, it has the message that the whites come first in terms of getting justice.
Event of Statue Toppling
The Spike statue’s whole story changed recently when angry protesters pulled it down from where it has long stood. Even though icons serve to keep memories alive, many Americans always had mixed feelings when it came to Pike’s statue. Many feel that it got erected to further a future for White Supremacy and get it reified over time (Brown et al., 2020). Several individuals have, in the past, held the opinion that it should get removed. The feeling was shared too by individual members of the Congress as the Freemasons equally support the move. The debate over the statue is not a new thing. The Colombia District mayor and other leaders tabled a bill before Congress to push for the statue removal (Norton, 2017). In the recent past, protesters circled the statue following a rally called Unite the Right as they felt that the icon transmitted bad memories (Bond et al., n.d.). They demanded that the monument should get torn down. The DC council shared this same feeling. Later in 2019, Eleanor Holmes, a Congresswoman, initiated another bill to remove the statue but keep the history that it contains. She felt that Pike was the least among the Confederate generals and ought not to get honored. She mentions that Spike got even forced to resign from his position in the Confederacy.
During the recent protests against the discrimination against black lives, D.C. renewed their call for the statue removal via a tweet. There was an evident difference in opinion when the current U.S. president, Donald Trump, made his remark concerning the statue removal. According to him, it was not right for D.C. Police to stand and watch the statue getting removed and finally burnt. He felt that the police did not do their job well enough to prevent the protestors from destroying American history. On June 20, the year 2020, the National Park Service removed the toppled statue. Many people considered the president’s remarks as inciting against the black race, not former Americans (Brown et al., 2020). The president reaffirmed his stand on the defense he has for the Confederate monuments and statues during the time of protests. According to him, there was no problem with continuing to hour Confederacy (“Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy”). He seemed to have overlooked a significant detail noted by historians who hold that a past event and its memory is one (Bond et al., n.d.).It happened when counter-protestor got killed during the demonstrations and the multitude that pulled down the Confederate statues.
The city mayor responded by ordering the removal of the figure right in the middle of the night. According to the mayor, the concern was the security of the citizens. The existence of the statue fueled the negative ethnicity towards the blacks in America and fought the sense of belonging among the blacks (Brown et al., 2020). The protests broke when a particular black American, George Floyd, got killed by a white police officer. The event took place on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis. The 46-year old black American had been arrested by the police soon after police line got called by someone who suspected George to be a criminal. In their arrest, the officers violated their code of conduct, causing death. The onlookers were enraged to witness the death of George in the hands of the white policemen. It resulted in riots and protests that later spread to other cities in America. The protestors that chanted ‘Black Livers Matter’ pulled down the statues that they felt reminded them of hatred against the blacks. It is during this protests that Albert statue, a Confederate, also faced removal. Therefore, the statues and monuments in America are not erected for memory purposes but to pass a message to non-American natives.
Conclusion
In conclusion, different statues in the United States carry different memories. As a way of preserving history, the American government erects monuments in its cities. It includes the figure of Albert Spike erected in the Judiciary square, not until protestors later removed it. Spike was a Confederate who then joined the Know-Nothing Party. He was equally a lawyer and an accomplished poet. He also joined the Freemasonry group, the people that later catered for the cost of his monument. Spike believed in racism, and for a reason, many blacks did not view it favorably to have his statue in the Judicial Square. According to many Americans, the monuments are not erected for historical purposes but to convey a message and further the white supremacy. As a result, many attempts have been made by having the statues removed by a legal process. The move has, however, not achieved the desired result. Recently, when a black man got killed by a white police officer, protests broke out, and those who felt black’s lives got targeted took to the streets. They pulled down and burned some of the monuments that held adverse history for the blacks, including Spike. Therefore, the statues and monuments in America do not get erected to preserve history but to pass a message.
References
Brown, N., McIlwraith, T., & González, L. T. (2020). PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY:206-220. http://perspectives.americananthro.org/Chapters/Perspectives.pdf
Bond, L., Craps, S., & Vermeulen, P. (n.d.). Memory on the Move.
Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy. (2019, February 01). Retrieved June 23, 2020, from https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy
Parks, M. (2017, August 20). Confederate statues got built to further a ‘White supremacist future.’ NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future
Norton, E. (2017, October 5). To direct the Secretary of the interior to remove the statue to the memory and honor Albert pike erected near Judiciary Square in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes. (2017 – H.R. 3983). GovTrack.us. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr3983
Shulz, K. (2020, June 20). Who was Confederate General Albert Pike, and why was his statue in D.C. in the first place? Retrieved June 23, 2020, from https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/albert-pike-statue-dc-toppled-toground-juneteenth-protests-who-was-albert-pike/65-54c86e07-065d-4a8e-819a-70fda3549f80