Sports, race, and culture are again making headlines and another statue has fallen. Even though this is a sports story, the statue in question oddly is not an athlete, but Kate Smith, a legendary singer from the 1930s. She has been connected to the Philadelphia Flyers since 1974, when she sang “God Bless America” before their Stanley Cup winning game. Playing Smith’s version of the song became a tradition to the point that the team erected a statue of her outside their stadium. Now, however, it has come to light that she may have been racist-based on some of the songs she recorded. Here is my take, historically speaking. I know nothing about Smith, but I agree she was probably a racist. How do I know? Because almost everyone in 1930 was.
As a historian, this has become a difficult subject. How do we handle past figures who may have been racist or, even worse, owned slaves? I have concluded that basically every major figure in American history was racist. Some were blatantly open about their beliefs. For others, you have to dig deeper into their personal lives. I am convinced that, hopefully not recently, if you examine every conversation, every letter, and every aspect about their lives, you will find something either racist or sexist. Why? Because until now, it has always been socially acceptable. Not right, but acceptable.
If it were possible to know every conversation that our political leaders have ever had, I feel certain every president has said or done something racist or sexist, even those who did the most for civil rights. Lincoln was an amazing man, but he was not an abolitionist. He was against slavery but did not think blacks were equal to whites. Truman signed anti-lynching laws, but his correspondence is laced with racist words. JFK did finally get involved in the fight for civil rights but was brought in kicking and screaming. He knew civil rights were not a popular subject for his Democratic base. I do not have specific examples for LBJ, Carter, and Clinton, but all three grew up in the segregated South, where racism was a way of life, and I just can’t believe they never did or said anything racist.
Those are the ones who supported civil rights. We have had twelve president who owned slaves, including some of our most respected. For most of the history of the nineteenth century and even with some in the twentieth, the Democratic Party was the party openly of white supremacy. Wilson is a good example of a progressive president who was openly racist. I am not sure what the date should be, but I have no problem stating that almost every major white American personality was racist since at least before the 1960s, but probably even later than that.
So what do we do? Take down every statue of every American? Please understand I am not saying that it is fine. Racism and sexism should never have been accepted, but they were. A great example is Robert E. Lee. Lee’s name and likeness are being removed across the nation. I am not saying this is wrong, but I am saying we need to consider the difficulty of judging the past with modern ideals. Lee has been accused of being a traitor and a racist. Let’s tackle the traitor issue first. Yes, with our current understanding, Lee was a traitor, but that is not so clear-cut in 1860. To Lee, being a traitor meant fighting against Virginia. Virginia was his home; it was Virginia that held his heart and loyalty. It is easy to blame southerners for secession, yet when you look at American history, there are examples of Northerners embracing the concept. During the War of 1812, New England delegates met at Hartford, Conn., to discuss breaking away from the country. At the time, northerners were fed up with southern political advantages. What changed by 1860 was that the north had taken over in terms of power. The only difference between the states rights attitude between the north and south was the south was losing the political battle. Was Lee wrong to fight against the Union? Yes. But to him and the world that he lived in, fighting against Virginia would have been the real crime.
Slavery and Lee is more difficult. There is no way to justify Lee’s owning of another human being. What is difficult, however, is that as a man of God, his church taught that slavery was OK, his understanding of the bible taught that blacks were inferior; his family taught him that it was fine, and his political leaders and heroes all believed in the practice. Even the Constitution of the United States accepted slavery. I would love for Lee to have risen above it all and defended the defenseless, but are we not asking a lot of those in the past.
I have dedicated my life to studying the Civil War and dealing with these issues. One of the best lines I have heard comes from the 1972 movie musical “1776.” In it, John Adams tells Ben Franklin that they will never be forgiven for not outlawing slavery and Franklin’s response was, “What will posterity think we were, demigods? We’re men, no more, no less, trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous god would have allowed. First things first, John, Independence. America. If we don’t secure that, what difference will the rest make?”
One last issue about taking down monuments: where does it end? I believe Dr. Martin Luther King is one of the greatest Americans and deserves all the remembrances we give him. However, as a minister in the 1950s and 1960s his views of the gay community may not be on par with the accepted views today. There is not much of Dr. King’s thoughts on this subject, but there is a 1958 column in Ebony Magazine where he gives advice to a young man having same-sex attraction. King calmly tells him that his feeling are probably culturally acquired and that he should see a psychiatrist who can help fix him. He tells him that recognizing it is the first step to fixing it. Acceptable answer for 1958, but not for 2019. We know little more about MLK’s views towards the LBGT community. His wife would go on to champion LBGT rights, but his daughter led a march to his grave against legalized gay marriage. What many believe is that if Dr. King was alive today he would support gay rights. I agree. But I also believe that if Lee was alive today he would denounce slavery. The problem is neither is alive today. They were products of their time, not ours.
If we take down every piece of history that offends, I question what that will lead to and where it will stop. I do not believe we should take down monuments of MLK, but what if his answer to the young man offends. When I hear of taking down monuments of Lee, Kate Smith, or any others, I think of the line from George Orwell’s 1984, “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” Orwell wrote this as a warning about the future, but it seems like the future is here.
Dr. James Finck is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma and Chair of the Oklahoma Civil War Symposium. Follow Historically Speaking at http://www.Historicallyspeaking.blog or Facebook at @jamesWfinck.
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