In Explaining Confederate Symbols, Colleges Struggle to Summarize History

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In a prominent spot on the University of Mississippi campus stands a statue of a nameless Confederate soldier. Erected in 1906, it was one of many unveiled across the South as a generation of Confederate veterans reached old age, says Andrew P. Mullins Jr., an associate professor of education and former chief of staff to the chancellor.

Mr. Mullins, who has worked at the university for decades, has spent a lot of time thinking about the history of the statue over the past several months. In 2014 several racist incidents at the university — including the appearance of a noose on a statue of the institution’s first black student, James Meredith — prompted the creation of a committee to analyze Confederate symbols on the campus. In the fall, as renewed cries from students surfaced to demand such symbols’ removal, the committee, which includes Mr. Mullins and several others, began drafting language to put the Confederate statue in historical context.

Across the country, and the South especially, colleges and universities are coming to terms with their historical ties to the Confederacy, and how those ties are honored through monuments, statues, and building names. In fielding students’ calls to remove such symbols, many colleges have promised to add much-needed context — to turn what protesters see as a celebration of white supremacy into an honest historical snapshot.

“We believe in maintaining that history in its historical context, in its place,” Mr. Mullins says. For Mississippi’s Confederate statue, that means installing an informational plaque. Its exact language was released earlier this month.

The plaque, which will be placed directly in front of the statue, describes when the statue was built and by whom, as well as its role in a historical event in 1962, when a mob rallied there to prevent Mr. Meredith (whose statue now stands just across from the Confederate soldier) from entering the campus. The plaque concludes: “This historic structure is a reminder of the university’s past and of its current and ongoing commitment to open its hallowed halls to all who seek truth and knowledge and wisdom.”

But not everyone agrees with those words. Students in the university’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will present a counternarrative to administrators on Thursday, part of which will read, “While the current university creed advocates respect for and the dignity of all persons, this historic structure is a reminder of the central role of white supremacy in the history of the University of Mississippi and the state of Mississippi.”

Mr. Mullins admits that there is a lot more the committee could have put on the plaque, but “we had to make a decision,” he says. Among other things, he has been asked why there was no mention of slavery, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, or the University Grays (Mississippi’s 11th Infantry Regiment in the Confederate army).

So how did the committee come up with the language it chose? For several months, Mr. Mullins and the other historians and administrators on the committee researched the memorial, listed what they felt should be included, and critiqued one another’s suggestions.

Mr. Mullins says he would have liked to include more detail on the “Lost Cause” — a campaign of Confederate glorification at the turn of the 20th century that occurred alongside the political oppression of African-Americans in the South, and that fueled the construction of statues like the one at Ole Miss. But he was overruled, he says, by other members who said it was better to explain the era as one in which Confederate veterans were dying out.

“My point is, you can’t put everything,” Mr. Mullins says. “And you finally have to compromise and move on.”

An ‘Honest Reckoning’

For many colleges, this is a time of “honest reckoning” with how they got where they are today, says Edward L. Ayers, president emeritus of the University of Richmond and a historian of the South, who was brought in by Ole Miss to consult on sensitive spaces on the campus.

Mississippi’s statue is far from the only symbol causing a stir at colleges. A statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was recently moved from a central location at the University of Texas at Austin to a local museum of American history. There, a task force of 12 members, made up of students, historians, and faculty members, came up with five options for the university’s president to consider.

In conversations among committee members, Gregory J. Vincent, Austin’s vice president for diversity and community engagement, recalls input from students: to avoid “whitewashing” history, to ensure that history is portrayed accurately, and to consider whether the panel’s options would allow the university to foster a learning environment.

Daina R. Berry, an associate professor of history and African and African-diaspora studies at the university, sat on the committee that drafted the options, but she kept her personal feelings about the statue to herself. As an African-American who teaches the history of slavery, she says, she is used to separating her work from personal views. “As a historian,” she says, “you want to write history in the purest form so you can let the reader come up with their own judgments and opinions. I was trying to do an unbiased job on a report I felt was very important.”

Although the statue of Davis was removed, statues of other Confederate leaders remain. University administrators are considering whether to erect a plaque to provide historical context for the remaining symbols.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a statue of a Confederate soldier that closely resembles the one at Ole Miss. Known as “Silent Sam,” the Chapel Hill statue stands at a prominent entrance to the campus.

W. Fitzhugh Brundage, a professor at the university who studies Southern history, says there has been a cycling of demands to remove the statue that crests every few years, until students graduate and the issue quiets down again. Last year opposition to the monument took the form of repeated vandalism — so frequent that the university put it under surveillance.

The continued presence of the statue is offensive to many students. What makes it more so, Mr. Brundage says, is its outright association with racial oppression. For instance, at its ceremonial dedication, a speaker bragged about having whipped a black woman in public. “Not every Confederate monument has such an explicit link drawn between it and white supremacy,” Mr. Brundage says.

Supporters of the monument argue it is a symbol of regional heritage, not hate. But, he says, “that’s not how the people who put it up saw it.”

The university has begun taking steps to deal with such controversies. Last year it renamed a building and formed a task force that is studying the campus’s history and planning markers for sites associated with racism in the past, including the quad where Silent Sam is located. The group will also consider options for an orientation program or course that will “communicate a complete history” of the university to incoming students and others new to the campus.