The New Yorker Radio Hour - What to Do with a Confederate Monument?

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

Across the South and well beyond, cities and states have been removing their Confederate monuments, recognizing their power as symbols of America’s foundational racism. In the town of Easton, Maryland, in front of the picturesque courthouse, there’s a statue known as the Talbot Boys. It depicts a young soldier holding a Confederate battle flag, and it honors the men who crossed over to fight for secession. It’s the last such monument in Maryland, outside of a battlefield or a graveyard. Casey Cep grew up nearby, and she’s watched as the town has awakened to the significance of the statue. Five years ago, when a resolution to remove it came before the county council, the vote was 5–0 opposing removal. But, during a summer of reckoning with police violence and structural racism, the statue came up for a vote again. Is time finally catching up with the Talbot Boys? New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. During the Trump administration, the culture war, as we know it, has gone from a war of words to an openly violent clash, with attacks taking place at protests in Portland, New York, and many other places. It seemed to start in Charlottesville three years ago, where a woman was murdered in a car attack by a right-wing protester. That Charlottesville rally, attended by neo-Nazis as well as pro-Confederates, was held in support of a statue of General Robert E. Lee. So a war that ended 150 years ago, remembered by monuments that went up 100 years ago, is now a flashpoint in a bitter partisan divide.

Our staff writer Casey Sepp grew up in the shadow of one of those Confederate monuments, and she has this story about its fate. Here's Casey Sepp. I grew up in a tiny town in Talbot County on the eastern shore of Maryland. It was like a lot of the towns around here, little farming, little fishing communities, places that have a post office and a few churches and not really much else. So for me, growing up, the big city was actually Easton, the county seat. There was a movie theater, grocery stores, a bookstore, there was even a pet shop.

I really like to go and see the parrot there. Easton, if you were to look at it, is really a picture postcard of a colonial town. It's got brick sidewalks, old-timey street lamps. And right in the center of town is a courthouse. If you came up Dover Street or you walk down Washington Street, you'd arrive right at the courthouse. And you'd be standing on this little patch of green grass, looking at this cozy sort of red brick building that has a clock tower,

beautiful cupola on top that chimes the time. and if you look to your left, you would see a statue of a boy holding a flag. So we're looking at a statue of a young boy. Looks like maybe could be 14 years old. And you see him sort of staring off at the distant horizon. He's got a very proud posture,

and he's holding a flag that the wind has kind of got wrapped around him like a cape. You'd probably assume it was the American flag. I walked all the way around it, trying to get a better look. And it looks actually like that might be a confederate flag. Down below I'm on a giant granite pedestal. Bright as day on the front of it, it says, to the Talbot Boys. To the Talbot Boys, 1861-865, C-S-A.

And the day is 1861 to 1860s. In 1965, Confederate States of America. And there's a bunch of names in the site here. And on the side of the monument, there's a lot of names inscribed. It looks like soldiers, probably, at least at the top, we've got admirals and brigadier generals. I guess did Maryland have soldiers fighting on both sides of the Civil War? Is that why? It actually never seemed odd to me to have a Confederate statue in town.

kids wear Confederate flag t-shirts to school. You would see Confederate flags on people's bumper stickers and on their baseball caps. Maryland might be right square in the Mid-Atlantic, but the eastern shore has always seen itself as Southern. But now our statue is the last one in the state of Maryland, outside of a battlefield or a graveyard. Mississippi has gotten rid of its Confederate flag.

Even Richmond is getting rid of its Confederate monuments. And I sometimes worry we might end up the last town, in America that still has a monument to the Confederacy. For five years now, a lot of people in Talby County have been trying to get the statue removed. To be clear, I'm among them. And this summer, the question about what to do with the Talbot boys was finally back on the official agenda.

Resolution 290, Madam Secretary, would you please read the title of the resolution? Resolution number 290, a resolution prohibiting statues depicting persons, signs, or symbols associated with military action on Talbot County property and providing for the removal of the Talbot Boy's statue while retaining the base of the monument. The Tobit County government is run by a council of five members.

There are three local business people, there's a former parole agent and a local historian. I am looking to historical sources to inform some of the discussion around this because as a historian, if I'm going to speak credibly about how this monument came to be the way it is, I've got to do my homework. That's Pete Lesher.

Along with serving on the council, he's also a curator at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Pete comes from a very old Talbot County family, old enough that some of them show up on a certain local monument. There are Goldsboro's and Tillman's cousins of mine, probably others if I really do some days. who are named on that monument. One of his ancestors, Oswald Tillman, was part of the group that erected the monument on the courthouse lawn. Oswald Tillman goes off in fights for the South,

comes back to East and after the war, and he is one of those who helps to raise fun probably contributes to the Talbot Boy's monument. Was on the committee with Joseph B.Seth, who I think was sort of the chairman of stuff. of that whole effort. Joseph Seth was a very big guy in Easton around the turn of the 20th century.

He was actually behind a lot of things in Easton. He brought the railroad lines to town. He ran the Bar Association. He even raised money to build the hospital that I was born in. And in 1912, he dreamed up the idea of this local monument to the Confederacy. Why just the Confederacy?

Well, Joseph Seth came from a slave-owning family, and it's clear from his memoirs that he took a pretty rosy view of slavery. Slaves were held here from the early days of the colony until the Emancipation Act, but they lived under a paternal, kindly rule. The bulk of the slaves were devoted to their masters and their families, taking great interest in everything concerning them. They considered themselves a part of the family,

and their devotion was so great that they would run any risk to protect them. When you look at the county's whole, Talbot County was not a pro-secessionist. Nevertheless, nevertheless, there were certainly some strong sense. on both sides. And we saw some people go over the lines and fight in Maryland units that got organized into the Confederate Army.

There was actually originally some talk about a separate union monument, but it never happened. So Seth and some other Confederate sympathizers just put theirs up. The early 20th century was when this romantic, lost-caused narrative of the Confederacy became popular all over the country.

A cottage industry sprung up to provide these kinds of statues. The Talbot Boys actually came from a company in Ohio, which had a whole catalog of statues. Actually, the exact same statue stood in Lake Charles, Louisiana, until it was knocked over last month by Hurricane Laura. So in 1916, the Talba Boys monument was dedicated on the courthouse lawn. For more than 100 years now, it's had pride of place.

You literally have to look up to it. It leaves you feeling like the whole county identifies with the confess. which was never true. I don't think it's a coincidence that three years after the statue went up, in 1919, a mob of some 2,000 people tried to lynch a black man on the courthouse grounds.

I get how this pains some people, how you get that knot in your stomach as you walk by this symbol. And how this is a racist symbol. This is a painful reminder of both Talbot County's

past and Talb County's present. And so I've come around really slowly to this. And frankly, I did not fully embrace complete removal of this until pretty recently. Pete Lesher co-sponsored the bill to take the statute down. It's not exactly a comfortable position for him out on the front lines of something so controversial. I'm not one generally to upset the apple cart. And so being the outspoken advocate for the complete removal of the Taubbois, I will tell you, is not a terribly comfortable role for me that I find myself in. And certainly there are others who are more verbose and more articulate and more strident than I am on this issue. The statue's most prominent defender on the council is Laura Price.

Removing the Taubo Boy statue might be a real issue in our community, or it might simply be an abrupt reaction to the chaos that is being fanned around the country. She's protected the statue for years now. But then there are council members Chuck Callahan and Frank DeVilleau. It was hard to know what they thought about the Talbot boys. Taubah County is so unique. We're going to be coming together, just like everybody's saying, and that's our whole goal. I think everybody's goal here tonight to talk through this is starting the conversation.

You may fight with one another, as we have. We will always disagree on many different things. But at the end of the day, we've come back and we're still making huge leaps and bounds and diversity and working together with race relations. That brings us to County Council President Corey Pack. So my early years in Talbot County, I knew nothing about the Tarbot Boy statue. Corey Pack isn't from Talbot County. He came here in 2002 to run a local parole office.

I walked past the statue numerous times, but never stopped to read the names that are inscribed on the base, never asked questions of the locals about the statue, and did not become aware of its history, of its beginnings, until after coming onto the council. It's probably worth mentioning. Corey is the only black member of the Talby County Council. I don't mean the only one currently serving.

I mean, he's the only black member ever. So do you remember the first time someone brought it up, either to you personally or in public at one of the meetings, brought up, you know, well, let's get rid of the Confederate monument? It had to be in around 2015. I'm trying to think when the incident in South Carolina... He means the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. when a white supremacist killed nine black churchgoers.

After Charleston, a lot of cities took down their Confederate monuments. New Orleans, Baltimore, even Birmingham got rid of theirs. So the Talbot County branch of the NAACP asked the county council to get rid of the Talbot boys. Richard Potter is the president of that branch. Our case was that the courthouse is a place where any constituent, regardless of race, color, gender should be able to. to go and get a fair and just trial. And how can people of color think that they're going to get a fair and just trial

when you have a monument that adorns the grounds of the courthouse that says to one group of people, you should have remained enslaved. And the council thanked us for the presentation and said that they would get back to us. And I will say, Casey, if we had taken a poll and in 2015 when the council first considered this, I would dare say that the vote probably would have been by Tava County Institute to keep the statue in place. Lynn Milkey, a retired attorney who practiced law in Easton,

was one of the people defending the statue. What's your first memory of the statue at the courthouse? Do you remember the first time you saw it or anyone mentioned it to you? No. Just when they saw it. thing came about. It was, you know, 40-plus years of, or 35 years, of practicing in that courthouse. And for a long time, it was hidden behind, you know, just overgrown trees, shrubs, or whatever. So, no.

Since 2015, Lynn has written a half-dozen editorials and letters to the editor opposing removal. She's also given public comments at council meetings. We have better and more important tasks to devote. your time to and our time to and money and energy in order to achieve racial justice than to obsess over erasing our history taking down the statute. The wave of hysteria has got to end, not by erasing one side of history, but rather context. I'm sure you're aware of the kind of assumptions a lot of listeners to this will bring to the kind of question of, okay, well, who's for these monuments? And I wonder, you know, if you had a direct,

line to those people, kind of what you would say about why you have become so active in the fight to preserve this one? I'm just an advocate for preserving history and not tearing it down as a pulse of the moment, like ISIS tore down statues in the Middle East. Gotcha. Even tearing down, you know, Abraham Lincoln's statue that Frederick Douglass commented on. It's an evasion of history for better or for worse than I'm an advocate for. History can be represented better and the constituency of Talbot County determines that. Then that's how it should. I guess my question is, is it just about, you know, not wanting to succumb to the mob and feeling like this is Talbot County and's discus.

or do you think the statue is objectively good and it should be there? I know. I haven't thought that through. And I'm not going to answer some of the top of my head. This is a monument that commemorates those deceased Tabricanians who fought and died in battle. Whether you agree or disagree with the cars that these young men fought for doesn't change the historical facts of the war. In November 2015, the County Council, announced that the Talbot Boy statue would be staying right where it was. They read out their unanimous decision at one of their public meetings. The statement had been drafted by Corey Pack.

It would be a sign of dishonor to those 90 deceased soldiers, as well as disrespectful to the family members, should this council or any other council remove, deface, or alter this monument in any way. Therefore, this council does not support the recommendation to have the Taubbert Boys' monument move to another location. That's Corey Pack, the president of the Talbot County Council speaking in 2015. Now, the vote that year to keep the Confederate monument on the courthouse lawn was unanimous. But this summer, in the midst of a national reckoning on race and racial justice,

the town of Easton is again considering what to do about the Talbot Boy statue. We'll find out just what happened. in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Staff writer Casey SEP has been reporting on the effort to remove a Confederate statue in Easton, Maryland. She grew up near Easton and spoke with many of those involved in the decision, including the county council president, Corey Pack, who opposed removing the statue in 2015. It was obviously, it seemed at the time strategic to have you be the council member, you know, the black council member is the one who decided to preserve the monument.

But did you think at the time, you know, the symbolism of this is, here I am the only black elected official and I will be the one, you know, defending the Confederacy as it were? Or did it just not feel that charge? No, no, no, no, no, I did. I can't say that I was completely divorced of that thought because I wasn't. And I was trying to be as deliberate in my response as I possibly could without factoring in race, without factoring in, well, am I supporting Confederacy or am I supporting slavery by saying that the statute should stay? And again, those conversations that I had with local citizens fed into that decision making, you know. And if I had heard from those baby boomers saying, hey, Corey, you know, it's horrible.

take it down, we need to get rid of it. It probably would have called it my decision a great deal, but that was not what I was hearing. I feel like there was already some talks about the Talbot Boy statue in our community after the death of George Floyd and after the protests were happening all over the world. This is Tori Paxon.

She's an activist in Talbot County. Paxon and a group of her friends helped organize a protest in Easton in June. June. I was there. I think it was probably the largest protest in the history of Talbot County. For a place that's the size of Easton and for a town that's like the town of Easton, it's actually pretty incredible for that many people to gather for anything. I ran into some teachers of mine from high school and from elementary school. My sisters ran into people they work with. It was a pretty moving day and brought together a lot of people from the community.

I can't remember exactly how many people came. I think it was. was close to a thousand. And it was just amazing to see all of that come together, especially in a town that needs it so much, because race wasn't talked about for such a long time. And if it was talked about, it was disregarded. See, for Tori Paxson, the statue isn't just a symbol of the past, the way Lynn Milkey and others describe it.

For her, it's a symbol of the white supremacy she feels right now in her community. We were, I personally, was racially profiled every time I was pulled over by the police. It was this constant aspect of, do you have drugs on you? And if you do have drugs on you, where are the drugs at? Don't get me wrong, I understand from some degree being a white person in Tulip County and only going into white spaces in Tobit County, you probably wouldn't know about these things because you've never encountered them, but they do exist,

and they happen a lot in Talbot County. That was the realization that Council President Cory Pack was just coming to. I have come to a point where there have been a change in me regarding signs and symbols and what they mean. They do carry an immense weight. I think the voice of the millennials have been the carrying weight.

of a lot of these changes of opinion of middle-aged men like myself who are sitting in seats of local power. I really do. I mean, the baby boomers that I spoke with back in 2015, quite honestly, Casey, they could care less about the statue. But for the voice of the millennial, I don't think you would have this movement. that you're having today. Is there, I mean, are we to gather there's a millennial in your life who's kind of, you know, changed your mind? I do have a millennial in my life.

You know, I do have a 25-year-old daughter who's been very active as of late. Corey Pack's daughter is Tori Paxson, the activist. I feel like when it comes to my father and I, I feel like we've always kind of sworeeck's sort of battle sometimes. But I think once I talk to him more about my own experiences and also about the experiences of my friends, kids that he watched me grow up with, and I think that's what really resonated with him

and made this change happen. And let me say this. I've gone back and talked with some of those people I talked with five years ago. They said, hey, look, it's not going to add an extra day to my life, an extra inch to my height, but Corey now and it's the time. We got to do this now.

It's time. It's time. In June, a resolution was presented to the county council to remove the Talbot Boys from the courthouse lawn. It had two sponsors, Pete Lesher and Corey Pack. Resolution prohibiting statues depicting persons, signs, or symbols associated with military action on Talbot County property and providing for the removal of the Talbot Boy statue while retaining the base of the monument. The council got a lot of public comment. At their meetings, over the phone, by email, even in the pages of the local newspaper,

there was a huge surge in support for getting rid of the Talbot Boys. According to the county's official record, they heard from almost 900 people about the Talbot Boys, and by my count, more than 700 of them were calling for removal. Recognized by no government on earth, the insurgency that fought our country does not deserve to be memorialized on public grounds. but I want to express the strong support for the removal of the entire structure, the entire statue of representations in the hallway. Let's not pick this down the road. Let's get it.

Or hall. Richard Potter of the NACP has always been optimistic about getting rid of the statue. Right will always prevail. And if you don't do what's right, right has a way of continuing to resurface. And will you take the opportunity to do what's right this time around? Resolution 290, Madam Secretary, would you please read the title of the resolution? Resolution number 290, a resolution prohibiting statues depicting persons. Which brings us to the night of the big vote, Tuesday, August 11th.

Because we have had no public input on amendments two or three, I believe that that is inappropriate for us to take. any votes on the amendment this evening? That's Laura Price. She and Chuck Callahan made the kind of unbelievable argument that more public comment was needed before they could do anything. There's a lot of people out there that really would love to, probably just hearing these for the first time. And we don't know that.

So we need to give them the right to think it through to see if that's right for them. It's honestly impossible to believe that the council has ever heard from more people. about anything. Councilman Pack at least seemed as mystified by this line of objection as I was watching the meeting at home. I'm just saying if that's the way you feel, Mr. Collahan, then that's nothing wrong with that's the way you feel. All I was all I was alluding to is that in the past you have said that they have I said that many times. That's what I said that many times. Well, what's the

argument? That's all I said. But the argument is this is something that's 155 years old. It's not a it's not a hundred and fifty five years old. It was erected in 1916. We're talking history. We're talking history here. That's what we're talking. Yes, but the statue is not 150 years old. Okay, it's 160.

It's 106. It's older than us. That's for sure. And nobody's here that's on that statue. There's 84 names on that statue. And they can't stand in front of us and tell us what their thoughts are. So that's something you need to think about too. Here was a council member saying that it was more important to him to consider.

the opinions of Confederate ghosts than it was to consider the opinions of his living, breathing, constituents. I would, I'd like to push it down the road a little bit so that people can put their thoughts together. That made Frank DeVilleo the swing vote.

Finally, he said what he was thinking. My problems with the amendments is the timing of right now with COVID-19. I'm absolutely committed to this goal, and I'm committed to being fair and transparent. This piece of legislation has been brought in front of the public at a time when we've not been able to open up to the public as we have in the past. Now it's time for us to put it back to the community if they've asked three different councils to change their opinion, and we've tried. We're putting it back to the community to put it on a ballot question would be my plan so that everybody has that opportunity to voice their opinion.

Look, there's a lot to say about that. First of all, it's not clear that the State Board of Elections would even allow a public opinion poll like that on a ballot ever. But even if they did, the earliest that that question could appear on a ballot is 2022, which would mean that the council members would get to run for re-election without ever dealing with the monument. I don't want to belay with this point. I don't want to belay with the public and the media any further with this.

And I think at this point, let's go ahead and call the roll and move on. Madam Secretary, please file your role on Resolution 290 as drafted. Mr. Pat? Aye. Mr. DeVillejo? No. Mr. Calhane? No.

Mr. Lesher? Aye. Ms. Price? No. Revolution 290 fails. I called Richard Potter right after the vote. Was it there in the beginning when we first started out? Richard was in his car on his way to a protest outside the courthouse.

I was on my way there, too. By the time I got there, there were already about 100 people at the courthouse. They'd come from Easton, of course, but also from Unionville and Trapp and St. Michael's and Oxford, all these little towns like the one that I grew up in. There were people who came with signs saying, vote them out, and no hate in our state, things they'd just thrown together really quickly, and gone because they didn't know what else to do. Those protesters were loud enough that you could hear them inside the council chamber.

We understand that citizens are quite upset over the earlier vote taking the day. So council is going to go ahead and suspend the balance of this meeting. Basically, we're at the end of the meeting. I know there's been a number of people. Council members Laura Price and Chuck Allahan never responded to requests to be interviewed. for this piece, Councilman DeVilleo commented by email. He wrote, I have been treated horribly by people I've known my entire life after that vote.

I've decided to move forward with my own plan and not allow any of them to help. On the night of August 11th, he exited the courthouse to a wall of protesters chanting shame. But when Corey and Pete left the courthouse, they were greeted like heroes. It truly was. I truly would have hopeful. And I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. My lord is we will not give up. It's hard to look at the statute debate and not think that something went wrong.

It might be tempting to say something like, well, that's local government, bureaucratic, slow to act. But I really don't think that's what happened here. The Talbot Boy statue remains for the exact same reason it was put up. Not because it's historically accurate, or because it reflects the shared values of the community. but because powerful people wanted it there, and it's within their power to ignore the people who don't. Fewer and fewer people in Talbot County will come right out and say that they support honoring the Confederacy,

or that the Civil War wasn't really about slavery. Mostly what you'll hear them say now is, we can't give in to mob rule, or that statue is our history, and we can't destroy it. Above all, what they like to say is, we can't take any action right now. But leaving the monument is an action. It's a vote to honor those who fought to maintain slavery in America.

Five years ago, all five council members cast that kind of vote. Last month, only three did. Someday, none will. Time is finally catching up with the Talbot Boys. And I know soon there will be no more Confederate monuments in the public squares of Maryland or anywhere else in America. Casey Sepp.

You can find her reporting on the Talbot Boy's statue at New Yorker.com. She's also the author of Furious Hours, a book about a murder trial and the late work of Harper Lee. I'm David Remnick, and thanks for listening

to The New Yorker Radio Hour this week, and I hope you'll join us next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of tune yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado.

This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon Corby, Calaliyah, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Morgan Flannery, Mung Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. We had assistance this week from Aaron Hanken of WIPR in Baltimore and Isaac Jones. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Trurina Endowment Fund.