September 24, 2020
Dear Lafayette County Board of Supervisors and Board of Aldermen,
My name is Emily Lutken, I am an Oxford native and concerned citizen. Like many Oxonians, I am concerned about the effect that the confederate monument has on the lives of everyday citizens. If you would please take a moment to read my concerns, I would deeply appreciate it.
It is time to move the confederate statue from the square. There are many reasons why I feel qualified to speak on this point.
- First of all, I am from Oxford. I have spent more time here than anywhere else. My mother, grandmother and great grandmother all went to Ole Miss. I walked up Bramlett Hill to kindergarten. I got my diploma from Oxford High School. I am not an outsider to the town we know and love.
- The civil war is a part of my heritage too. I have ancestors that fought for the confederacy. That great grandmother that went to Ole Miss? Her uncles died fighting for the confederacy. I am not an outsider to the past.
- I have a degree in Art History. I wrote my 75 page thesis about a statue. I am not a stranger to what art can mean.
So now that you know where I am coming from, let me explain where I am going. This statue is smack dab in the middle of the square. The beating heart of our town. It is standing in an official capacity as the watchdog of our courthouse. As an Oxonian, as a southerner, as an art historian, I say that this is entirely inappropriate.
As Oxonians, what are we telling people with this statue?
That we are stuck in the past, and that it matters more than our future. That we don’t care about how it might affect all the black Oxonians that have to walk by it every day.
As a Southerner, I am not proud when I see a monument to the biggest mistake the South has ever made. Slavery is the worst thing our ancestors ever did, and fighting for it does not need to be celebrated. Yes, young men fought and died. Many of them were brave, most of them were not slave owners, and a lot of them probably just thought they were defending their families. And it is sad that they lost their lives. But no matter how you swing it, they were defending an institution that is undeniably evil. This action does not need to be forever immortalized in the middle of our town.
Which brings me to my last point, as an art historian, I would like to speak to the historical value of statues. Many statues are of horrible people who did terrible things. Across history, people have been trying to figure out what to do with these statues of people who we later figure out we do not want to immortalize. I do not agree with the concept of damnatio memoriae. I cannot say that we should destroy every statue made to represent a bad person, or made by a bad person. They add insight to history and examples of the art and culture of the time.
But the key is placement.
Where something is displayed matters. The Statue of Liberty being placed near Ellis Island, where the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free arrived in America, gives meaning to her message. Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro opens his arms to redeem the whole city from above. A statue of Saddam Hussein once towered over the public Firdos Square in Baghdad, symbolizing his power.
The confederate monument has a place in our world, but it is not on the square. It is in a museum, where it can serve as a tool to understand a chapter of the past, both historical and artistic.
Where it stands, in front of our symbolic building of justice, this statue states more as to who we are now than the history of who we were when it was made. It states to the black person that their place is still underfoot. That they are still below the people who fought to keep them down almost 200 years ago. It tells everyone that our living black friends of today mean less to us than the memory of white ancestors of yesterday. It states that our courthouse, our government, serves up justice only for the white man.
Our town’s role in the confederacy is a chapter that we cannot expunge from history. We cannot deny that this was the side for which many men from our community fought and died. That will never change. But we also cannot deny that thousands of black people, also the ancestors of modern Oxonians, were enslaved and forced to live lives of servitude and misery for the sake of a fundamentally flawed system. The display of the statue on the square is an erasure of half of our history. In glorifying our mistake, it downplays the enslavement experienced by the ancestors of our friends and neighbors. As it is, the statue does not represent history—it represents an ideology. And continuing to have it on the square means it represents a present ideology.
The statue should be moved to a place where it can represent a sad piece of our history, not the trajectory of our future.
Please move the statue.
I know you have already officially made a decision about this. But you are allowed to change your mind. In Matthew 15:21-28, Jesus changes his mind about what kind of people deserve mercy and help. Maybe you can find it in your hearts to change your minds too.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to my concerns.
Respectfully,
Emily Lutken, Oxford local