At some point, the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors may be tempted to erect a monument on the grounds of the Lowndes County Courthouse to honor some significant event or fallen heroes.
When that day comes, I have a three-word suggestion:
Don’t do it.
In its history, the courthouse lawn has been the site of two monuments. Both have been a disaster.
The first was the Confederate monument, erected at the courthouse in 1912, a tribute not so much to the fallen, but to the racist ideals that plunged our nation into bloody conflict. That monument was relocated to the Friendship Cemetery in 2022 where it stands over the graves of the Confederate soldiers interred there.
The second monument, dedicated in 1933 at the Magnolia Bowl, was relocated to the courthouse lawn in 2015. It paid homage to the white soldiers from Lowndes County who died in World War I. Funded by the local Daughters of the American Revolution, the monument lists only the names of those white soldiers, deliberately ignoring the dozen Black soldiers from Lowndes County who gave their lives for a community that wouldn’t even acknowledge their sacrifices.
This shameful omission was exposed by a group of amateur historians from Chuck Yarborough’s history class at Mississippi School for Math and Science five years ago, but it only came into public knowledge over the past year.
City and county officials scrambled to acknowledge these heroes before Memorial Day this year, erecting a sign at Columbus City Hall until they can be appropriately and permanently honored on the courthouse lawn.
Because it would be next to impossible to add these soldiers’ names to the current monument, another plan is gathering momentum: A third monument to be erected on the courthouse grounds, one that lists the names of the omitted heroes with an explanation for why their names were not included on the original monument.
At the risk of repeating myself, a bit of advice:
Don’t do it.
It is no more appropriate to have separate but equal monuments today than it was to have separate but equal schools, water fountains, restrooms or any other public accommodations 60 years ago.
The sacrifices of these Black soldiers were no different than those of their white brothers-in-arms. Black and white fought and died for a common cause. They are united in a hero’s death and should equally be united in memory of a grateful community.
It is far better to have no monument at all than to have two. A wrong can be made right, but the presence of two monuments, segregated by race, is a tribute to a wrong. It calls attention to the wrong at the expense of the righteous – the sacrifice of all of our fallen soldiers, Black and white.
There are, then, only two real choices.
First, remove the current monument, perhaps donate it to some private organization who isn’t offended by it, like say, the Daughters of the American Revolution. There is, after all, no monument to the memories of Lowndes County soldiers who died in World War II, Vietnam or any of the armed conflicts since. Is there some reason that the names of the fallen soldiers of World War I alone should be commemorated in such fashion?
The second option is to replace the monument with a new monument that lists the names of all of those soldiers alphabetically without regard to race. Supervisors have grumbled about the cost of that, but it seems to me that the costs of setting things right should be covered by the group who deliberately set things wrong.
If I were a supervisor, I would propose that the board write a letter to the national headquarters of The Daughters of the American Revolution proposing that they cover the full costs of a new, appropriate monument.
I’d help compose that letter, explaining that it was one of its chapters that made the conscious choice to ignore the sacrifices of these Black heroes and that every day the monument exists in its current form it is as much a monument to the Daughters of the American Revolution’s (presumably) racist past as it is a monument to fallen soldiers (but only the white ones, of course).
Then I would wait for their response.
Depending on that response, it’s either a complete and honorable monument or no monument at all.
What do you say, supervisors?
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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