History Is What Happened. Memory Is a 22-Foot Gold Statue on a Golf Course.

[Martin Eden]

5. "The statue was always an argument, not an archive."

That, plus the quote below, pretty much says it all.

"watch what people build, and in the building you will learn more about the builders than about the built."

The builders of Confederate statues during the Jim Crow era might have believed they were honoring "heroes" of the South, but first and foremost they were asserting White supremacy and trying to rewite the history of the worst cause for which Americans ever fought.

A man who builds statues or monuments to himself has no honor. Each edifice is a testament to his consuming ego and need for self glorification.