As Jefferson Davis leaves the building, the harder work to remove white supremacy begins
Confederate President Jefferson Davis has slipped a long way down from his historic pedestal in recent years, and on Saturday, Kentucky pulled him all the way off.
A crew from American Industrial Contractors started work early, first trussing the 15-foot tall, marble statue, then constructing an elaborate metal cage around him in preparation for his last trip out of the state’s Capitol Rotunda.
In just two days, state officials finished an argument that’s been going on for a decade about whether Kentucky’s Capitol should celebrate someone who led a war to preserve slavery in the United States. In the end, protests over police brutality that have brought new attention to racism and white supremacy brought the matter back to the forefront. Last week, Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, and Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican, along with a large bipartisan contingent, agreed the statue should go.
On Thursday, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Taylor Mill, prefiled a bill to replace Davis with a statue of Carl Brashear, a Black Navy diver from Kentucky. He also criticized the state Historic Properties Advisory Commission for its inaction. On Friday, the commission held a quick meeting to affirm the removal in an 11-1 vote. On Saturday morning, the work began.
In 2018, the commission voted to keep it.
“It was past time for this vote and this action,” Beshear said. And, he pointed out, it means “every child who walks into this Capitol feels welcome, and none of them have to look at a symbol and a statue that stands for the enslavement of their ancestors.”
Beshear, flanked by his two top cabinet officials, J. Michael Brown and La Tasha Buckner, who are Black, pressed the button to start the elaborate engineering that lifted the statue off its base, then gently set it on the floor. First Lady Britainy Beshear watched with the couple’s two children from the balcony, along with Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman and her newborn, Evelyn. The whole scene was in direct contrast to Lexington’s 2017 removal of statues from Cheapside, done in the dark of night to avoid violent protesters in the wake of Charlottesville.
Once the statue was removed, workers then discovered in the brick and marble base an empty bottle of Glenmore bourbon and the Oct. 20, 1936 front page of the State Journal newspaper, as though someone thought it might be taken down some day.
The only other elected official there was state Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, who brought his son, Sam, to witness the removal.
“This is a good moment for Kentucky history, a really good day,” Nemes said. “Ever since Lincoln was living he had to look over his shoulder at Jeff Davis, and even in the Rotunda and he doesn’t have to do it anymore. It shows where we are as a country and where we might be able to go.”
The statue will now be transported to the Jefferson Davis Historic Site in Todd County, where he was born. Just like the statue of General John Hunt Morgan, who sits in a bucolic spot in the Lexington Cemetery overlooking the Confederate dead, those who still believe in the Lost Cause or are simply interested in history, can make the trek to Fairview.
A lot of people out there are squawking about erased history. Let’s then try to remember the real history. The Davis statue was put up not directly after the Civil War, but in 1936, at the height of Jim Crow legalized segregation by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. This group put up statues all across the South, which like the Confederate flag, were meant to celebrate white supremacy and symbolically remind Black people who was really in charge. As if they had any doubts.
We certainly shouldn’t forget about Davis and other Confederates, whose belief in the enslavement of others so outweighed consideration of their nation that they actually seceded from it. And we won’t. There’s too much work to do to continue chipping away at the white supremacy that is embodied in marble and embedded in our lives. Once we remove statues, we have to erase the bigotry and injustice that are right in front of us — in our economy, our housing patterns, our education, our justice system and our healthcare.
The real heavy lifting is ahead.
This story was originally published June 13, 2020 at 11:45 AM.