[On April
9th, 2003 a group of both Iraqi civilians and U.S. military
forces together toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos
Square, a hugely symbolic moment that highlights the role statues can play in
our communal spaces and identities. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that moment
and four other statues, leading up to a weekend post on my own continuing
thoughts on Confederate statues like those in my
hometown.]
On a historically,
culturally, and symbolically crucial statue and monument.
Thanks to Glory, one of the best American historical films of all time,
I don’t think there’s too much danger of us leaving the 54th Massachusetts, Robert
Gould Shaw, or African American Civil War soldiers out of our national
narratives. It’s true that we largely had done so up until the film’s 1989
release, and certainly also true that it’s not necessarily ideal to get our
history straight from a Hollywood film (although having read the letters
of both Shaw and an African American soldier from the regiment, I can say
that this particular film does a very good job of representing that history
with complexity and sophistication while still going for the big emotional
notes for sure). But nonetheless, on a blog devoted first and foremost to
American things that we should better remember, the 54th and Shaw
probably don’t need as much of a spot as many of my topics.
Yet as impressive and inspiring as the events surrounding
the 54th were—from the formation of the regiment to its climactic
moments at South
Carolina’s Fort Wagner, and everywhere in between—I would argue that some
of the most inspiring moments to come out of those events happened between
twenty and thirty years later, with the development and creation of Augustus
Saint-Gaudens’ Boston Common memorial to the
regiment and to Shaw (begun in 1884 and unveiled in 1897). The
inspiration, then and now, came first from Shaw’s family, who rejected
Saint-Gaudens’ initial plans for an equestrian statue of just Shaw and argued
instead (echoing Shaw’s father’s insistence that his son remain buried near
Fort Wagner with his African American soldiers, rather than being exhumed and
moved to a Boston-area cemetery) for a statue that included regimental members
as well as their Colonel. And it is a serious understatement to say that
Saint-Gaudens ran with that inspiration; he decided to use
African American models on which to base his sculptures, becoming (it
seems) the first white sculptor to do so for any monument or memorial, and as a
result created a memorial that is both grand and intimate, heroic and deeply
human.
The first time I saw the Shaw Memorial was as part of a History and Literature
seminar in my freshman year of college, and I remember both one of the
professors and all of my peers arguing that in it Shaw on horseback was still
privileged above (literally and figuratively) the African American soldiers.
And I guess I can see that argument (which echoes in part this important
book by historian Kirk Savage, perhaps the foremost American scholar of this
week’s subject), although Shaw was a Colonel and would have ridden into battle
on a horse, so I’d read that detail more as a part of Saint-Gaudens’ attempt at
accuracy (especially given the care with which he sculpted those individual
African American soldiers). But in any case, the Memorial as a whole, like the
process that produced it, and like the men and moment that it captures,
represents one of the very best things in our collective history and identity,
the collaborative efforts of a multi-generational, multi-racial, and multi-vocal
community across decades and in the face of some of the most brutal and tragic
events we’ve ever witnessed.
Next statue
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other statues you’d highlight and analyze?
No comments:
Post a Comment