Editor, Gazette-Journal:
“Mathews County needs to set an example.” —County supervisor Melissa Mason, 2022.
“Our public memorials are symbols of who we are and what we value. When we honor leaders who fought to preserve a system that enslaved human beings, we are honoring a lost cause that has burdened Virginia for too many years.” —Va. Governor Ralph Northam, 2021.
Many thanks to Sherry Hamilton, for excellent (4/28, 5/5) reporting on Mathews County commons Confederate monument debates—and to the G-J for its editorial (3/17/22) “Our vote is our voice.”
I was baffled to read last month that Mathews supervisors were seriously considering the sale of public land to private political interests, contrary, I believe, to state laws. But it didn’t surprise me. We white males tend to go kumbaya-deaf when women, especially of darker hue, remind us of injuries citizens of color suffer thanks to our systemically legalized privileges (Black codes, lynching, eugenics, redlining, carceral capitalism, etc.).
So Dr. Mason had to say what everybody knew but few voiced: the Confederate monument facing the courthouse wasn’t put or kept there for mourning, but to sanctify Blacks’ subordination. Well, she didn’t say that. I did. She’s kinder, politer than I.
She simply noted people haven’t been prayerfully laying wreaths but rather “constantly putting up Confederate flags” there.
Last summer, the Virginia Supreme Court unanimously ruled old agreements with “restrictive covenants”—like an 1890 one mandating the Commonwealth “faithfully guard” and “affectionately protect” a Confederate statue—are “unenforceable” if designed “to compel government speech, by forcing the Commonwealth to express, in perpetuity, a message with which it now disagrees.”
Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring said removing the statue confirms our state’s past half century of progress in honestly embracing all residents and visitors equally:
“For too long we allowed our communities to be dominated by symbols of white supremacy and hate that did not represent who we had become as Virginians.”
Did this historic decision fly over Mathews County unnoticed? Can a local Mathews referendum or county board vote—“socially responsible and worthy of citizen trust” the website boasts—legally supersede Virginia’s Supreme Court?
State laws might answer: Virginia Constitution, Article VII. Section 9, Article I. Bill of Rights, Section 11 and statute §15.2-1802. Public property can transfer to private citizens only with open bids and only “for development of business and industry.”
If I were Jewish, I’d feel unsafe near any monument honoring Nazi generals at the people’s hall of justice. Imagine how Black children feel on the Court Green.
So why would any American, who knows by heart the Pledge of Allegiance (“… with Liberty and Justice for All”) fight to retain on the commons symbols of a failed state (CSA, 1861-1865, RIP) whose very existence belied the living dignity of a brilliant minority whose geniuses—besides inventing traffic lights, guaranteeing space flights, making medical discoveries, fine-tuning sports, composing literature, music and other fine arts—have helped America the Beautiful mature into the most creatively diverse, Constitutional republic in human history?
S.M. Greaves
Gloucester, Va.