The Churn
A Guide to Understanding How and Why Atlanta Finally Removed Oakland Cemetery’s Confederate Monument
Butter ATLAugust 23, 2021
Last week, in a unanimous decision, the Atlanta City Council voted to remove a large confederate monument from Oakland Cemetery.
This is your Butter.ATL guide to understanding why.
What is Oakland Cemetery?
Oakland Cemetery is Georgia’s most famous and historic cemetery. Originally created in 1850, the cemetery is now reserved for the most prominent people in Atlanta’s history. The site also is one of the oldest continually operating sites in the city.
Where is it?
Oakland Cemetery is located in downtown Atlanta, directly next to Grant Park. If you’ve been to Tin Lizzy’s, Six Feet Under, or Republic Social House, it’s the cemetery across the street.
Who is buried there?
A lot of prominent Atlantans, including Margaret Mitchell, Maynard Jackson and several Atlanta mayors, famous golfer Bobby Jones, and Morris Brown College co-founder Bishop Wesley John Gaines.
Why do we have confederate cemeteries?
Confederate cemeteries are a type of confederate memorial, all of which are used to enshrine a (false) ideology of white supremacy. These cemeteries are meant to be physical embodiments of remembrance* and historic preservation but there are real problems with that. This “remembrance” was/is a purposeful selection of histories and myths related to the southern-white-male-centered POV, shaped by white women, of who fought in the civil war, why they fought, and who was ultimately the true victims of the war.
Most importantly these narratives left out African Americans (unless there were falsities to spread), made “the yankees” the villains, left out key facts regarding its development, and began the trope of “big government” infringement that’s still here today. The point was never to factually remember the Civil War, its causes, or reconstruction — only to romanticize an idealized south that never was.
Why do we have confederate cemeteries in Atlanta?
Oakland Cemetery isn’t the only place with a confederate cemetery in Atlanta.Westview Cemetery also has one. Confederate cemeteries existed because white Atlanta wanted them to.
At the end of the Civil War and during the Reconstruction era, the backlash to African-Americans was severe, giving way to the eventual Jim Crow era of the 1870s-1950s. White Atlanta was more than willing to put up money and legislative power to create and maintain them —something we are still wrestling with today.
Why can’t Atlanta just get rid of the memorial?
Oakland cemetery is technically a park within the city of Atlanta. The confederate monuments in particular are part of the city’s artwork collection. Just know Black people didn’t decide this; it was decided decades ago.
Who wants to keep the memorials?
The Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Georgia GOP, Governor Brian Kemp, and others. The same group of people who don’t want to change Stone Mountain, despite the exodus of its managing company, and Marriott, over its history.
Why do we have confederate memorials?
The creation of confederate memorials began almost immediately after the Civil War. And the history from the beginning has always been about two things: 1) enshrining white southern history and ideology, and 2) intimidation against African Americans. The “heritage” was and still is built on hate.
What are other types of confederate memorials?
Confederate statues, obelisks, paintings, street names, school names, public parks, historic fiction novels, memorial societies, textbooks, holidays, Civil War reenactments, an SEC mascot, stage plays, movies, flags, and Stone Mountain Park to name a few. Not to mention the names of many jails/prisons, courthouses, universities, and state and federal buildings all have aspects of Confederate memorabilia.
Confederate memorials are myth-making symbols of white supremacy started by white women.
[Shameless plug here: I have an article that goes more into depth on this, that you should probably read. — King]But what you should know is that Memorial Societies — the precursors to the United Daughters of the Confederacy — are the reason why so much of this exists in the first place. They were started by confederate widow groups who not only created the narratives around the Civil War, including “the war between the states,” southern chivalry, and the “lost cause” myth. They also helped create the education systems, political lobbying, and fundraising used in the creation of these cemeteries, and often the accompanying statues.
Confederate memorials were accompanied by deliberate “re-education” initiatives.
At the heart of the confederate monuments controversy is the role of “preserving history.” Both then and now, these monuments were not about actually preserving factual history as much as providing a vehicle for chivalry, intimidation, and hero worship. During this time Memorial Societies and the eventual UDC helped create new education systems that we still have today.
Most of our collective understanding about the Civil War, the confederacy, African Americans, and white southern society was primarily shaped by white women who’ve crafted a false reality over decades. This is often at the exclusion of African Americans, accompanied by a removal of African Americans from history books. There have been exception made for certain myths and stereotype tropes, such as the happy and docile slave, the genteel plantation owner,slavery as a “necessary evil,” “the war between the states,” and the black confederate.
[Second shameless plug: Stone Mountain and the KKK part 1 and part 2, written by yours truly. — King]What about Black confederates?
We don’t have enough time to get into this, but you should know that what you know about Black confederates is probably wrong. And it’s likely a part of a longer narrative, portrayed by white southerners, to vindicate and legitimize their role in slavery, the confederacy, and the Civil War.
Yes, there were a few African American members who worked in some capacity within the confederacy but these were primarily in two groups of people: 1) slaves who were brought to do various non-combat related tasks, and 2) Black male slaves who were promised freedom.
Also this has been used as a way to build a false narrative:that there were African American men in equal numbers on both sides of active combat.This is an absolute lie. 99 percent of all African American men who served in the Civil War were for the Union army. That doesn’t mean things were sweet, or that African American men were treated any better — that’s just the facts.
Why don’t we just preserve Black burial sites and white ones?
We could, but we don’t. The glass is half-full. What you should know is that Oakland Cemetery is city-owned property, while the bulk of cemeteries are privately run. Any historic markers, cemeteries, buildings or statues were the result of African American communities doing that themselves. And this was often ften met by white resentment, manifesting in many destroyed or purposely demolished African-American burial sites.
What is being removed from Oakland Cemetery?
The lion,a confederate memorial statue placed a few feet away from a 30-foot-tall obelisk in the cemetery. The statue was created by T. M. Brady of Canton, Georgia, and erected in 1894, commissioned and funded via the efforts of the daughters of the confederacy. It was modeled directly after the Lion of Lucerne, a sculpture commemorating the massacre of Swiss Guards who protected the monarchy during the French Revolution. The confederate version lies in a dying position, similar to the Lucerne version, but holding a confederate flag to commemorate the lives of 3,000 confederate soldiers.
What about the Obelisk? The confederate graves?
The obelisk and graves will remain in the cemetery for now. The obelisk and the lion have been a target for tagging since last year. The obelisk’s graffiti can still be seen today at the site, while the lion has been damaged beyond repair.
Why is this happening now?
This is really a prolonged battle against confederate monuments that spans decades. But according to historian Liz Clappin, host of “A Tomb with a View,” a serialized podcast on historical graves and cemeteries, the Lion statue has been defaced at least four times since the fall of 2019. Each time it cost the city to clean, repair, then patrol around it.
Brian Kemp passed a law banning the removal of confederate monuments.
In 2019, Governor Kemp signed into law that no confederate statues could be removed without being placed in an area of equal prominence. This legislation only passes for the last-minute addition of including Civil Rights Era monuments but as we know, lol, “inclusion.”
The law has since been challenged in the post-George-Floyd era of protest. Decatur had an obelisk in front of its historic courthouse since 1908, but removed it during the summer of 2020, citing safety issues and concerns that activists would tear it down.
So what happens now?
Right now the statue will be put into storage. Expect a legal challenge from state level lawmakers, likely and often backed by the UDC and the Sons of the Confederacy. These are the same groups currently embroiled with the lingering changes to Stone Mountain Park.
Also expect more of this to play out into a “blue versus red” scenario in which Democratic city and county governments battle Republican state-level departments and lawmakers.