I

f you’re anything like me, the 
Black Lives Matter movement 
has caused you to second guess 

everything you thought you knew 
about our country’s controversial his-
tory. I went to a small high school that 
had little to no diversity from students 
to staff, which is reflected in the gaps 
in my education. Personally, June-
teenth was a major awakening for me. 
Though June 19 was the day that the 
last enslaved people were emancipated 
in Texas, I had never heard about it 
before. I was always taught that Presi-
dent Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation 
Proclamation, along with the passage 
of the 13th amendment, ushered in 
a new era of liberty. This is just one 
example of the palpable bias that shad-
ows modern history curriculum. The 
United States history curriculum is 
long overdue for an overhaul that accu-
rately portrays our country’s history. 

In my small high school, however, 

this controversy seemed far away. 
In fact, it wasn’t uncommon to see 
someone sporting clothing that fea-
tured the Confederate flag, igno-
rant to the deeper meaning of that 
symbol. Recently, however, a debate 
has sparked regarding the display 
of Confederate flags and Confeder-
ate monuments. In cities across the 
country, Confederate statues have 
been removed, and NASCAR offi-
cially banned the Confederate flag at 
all of its events. Still, those opposed 
to the departure of this iconography 
remain adamant, urging that dis-
playing Confederate symbols only 
memorializes history and ensures it 
doesn’t repeat itself. 

The origin of these symbols seems 

to contradict this notion, as many 
Confederate statues were erected 
during the Jim Crow and Civil Rights 
movement era, in direct response 
to the tidings of Black equality in 
America. Furthermore, the Confed-
erate flag — a modern day symbol of 
white supremacy defended as a piece 
of history — was never the official 
flag of the Confederacy. It was just 
the battle flag. In addition, the flag 
wasn’t widely used until the 1940s in 
response to the emergence of ideas 
that would guide the Civil Rights 
Movement. 

But we were never taught this. We 

were never taught that the flag was 
a direct symbol of hate utilized as a 
response to the Civil Rights move-
ment. We were never taught that 
many Confederate statues were simi-
larly erected as symbols of inequal-
ity and intimidation. It is because 
we never learned these precious 
facets of history that the gravity of 
these symbols has been lost. Unfor-

tunately, this appears to be a trend: 
White authors of history curricu-
lum paint the tale of this country in 
black and white — leaving gaps on the 
canvas where the grey of our ances-
tors’ immorality should lie. Instead, 
we are taught to revere the Found-
ing Fathers, many of whom owned 
slaves, and that, while wrong, slavery 
was simply the answer to an inevi-
table need for labor in the colonies. 
While our textbooks may include a 
very basic telling of events, this tell-
ing is incredibly one-sided and fails 
to include a fuller, complex version of 
history wherein minorities perished 
at the hands of white men we have 
been taught to glorify like modern-
day gods. 

This is due in part to textbook 

information disparity created by 
partisan politics. In a phenomenon 
known as “The Texas Effect,” many 
publishers have historically based 
curriculum off of Texas standards 
because Texas has a large number 
of public schools, equating to higher 
profits for these publishers. This cur-
riculum tends to highlight Christian-
ity, downplay slavery and celebrate 
the Founding Fathers — omitting 
or manipulating vital chunks of 
our nation’s controversial history. 
When compared to California his-
tory textbooks, these inconspicuous 
differences are very telling of the 
motivations behind this twisted nar-
rative of history. These textbooks are 
intended to indoctrinate students, as 
many of these policymakers want to 
influence the upcoming generation, 
and the best way to do so is through 
education. 

The actual events of our nation’s 

past and the history we were taught 
are two very different tales. While 
the names and dates may be the same, 
the narrative diverges significantly, 
glazing over horrific atrocities while 
glorifying immoral men. The only 
cure for ignorance is education, and 
the only remedy for manipulation is 
honesty. We need a comprehensive 
reform of the curriculum to illustrate 
a candid portrait of history. Though it 
may be uncomfortable at times, it was 
Meghan Markle who said, “We’re 
going to have to be a little uncomfort-
able right now, because it’s only in 
pushing through that discomfort that 
we get to the other side of this and 
find the place where a high tide raises 
all ships.” After all, teaching an hon-
est and accurate version of history is 
the only way we can make sure that 
this history never repeats itself again. 

5

Thursday, July 23, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5
OP
OPINION
ON

One nation, two histories

MADELEINE LAPIERRE | COLUMNIST

Madeleine LaPierre can be reached at 

madlapi@umich.edu.

TUHIN CHAKRABORTY | COLUMNIST

L

ast Friday, the nation mourn-
ed the loss of one of the great-
est American civil rights 

leaders of all time. U.S. Rep. John 
Lewis, D-Ga., passed away after a bat-
tle with stage four pancreatic cancer 
at the age of 80. Before his election to 
Congress in 1986, Lewis had previous-
ly distinguished himself as a leader of 
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating 
Committee and a member of the “Big 
Six,” an elite group of civil rights icons 
that included Martin Luther King Jr. 
In 1963, Lewis spoke at the March 
on Washington, where King gave his 
globally famous “I Have a Dream” 
speech. From organizing protests 
nationwide and marching with Dr. 
King in the 1960s, to leading a sit-in 
on the U.S. House floor advocating for 
gun control legislation in 2016, Lewis 
is a giant whose shadow spans many 
eras in U.S. history and whose legacy 
will no doubt shine far into the future. 

Lewis passed away as the U.S. is 

grappling with one of the greatest 
civil rights struggles in recent memo-
ry: the widespread protests following 
the George Floyd killing. It is widely 
known that one of the consequences 
of this fallout has been the renewed 
debate regarding the removal of 
statues of Confederate or otherwise 
racist historical figures across the 
country. However, with the debate 
around statue removal still raging, 
it is equally important to consider 
which statues we should keep and 
which statues we should build. 

All throughout his life, Lewis 

fought for racial equality in a way con-
sistent with the values of today’s Black 
Lives Matter movement, and now 
that he has left us, it is time to immor-
talize him in marble or metal like we 
have done for so many less-deserving 
Americans. Specifically, a good place 
to start would be having a statue of 
Lewis replace the statue of Confed-
erate Vice President Alexander Ste-
phens as one of Georgia’s statues in 
the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

Championed by the late 19th cen-

tury Vermont senator Justin Morrill, 
who is better known for the Morrill 
Land Grant Act which helped estab-
lish public universities like Michigan 
State, the legislation calling for a Stat-
uary Hall commemorating American 
heroes was passed into law in 1864. 
The criteria for memorializing statues 
according to Morrill’s proposal is as 
follows: “deceased persons who have 
been citizens thereof, and illustrious 
for their historic renown or for distin-
guished civic or military services such 
as each State may deem to be worthy 
of this national commemoration.” 
Currently, Georgia’s two statues are 

Crawford Long, a 19th-century phy-
sician who invented the use of anes-
thetic substances during surgery, and 
the far more controversial Stephens 
who, in addition to being a leader in 
the Confederacy, was the owner of 
30+ slaves before the Civil War. 

Since John Lewis has, to the great 

sadness of so many Americans, passed 
away, it is time to remove the statue 
of Stephens and erect one that com-
memorates Lewis in the Capitol. This 
is more than a fitting proposition, as 
Lewis was known during his life as 
“the Conscience of the Congress” for 
his calm but principled leadership. In 
addition to the aforementioned gun 
control sit-in, some of Lewis’s greatest 
accomplishments in Congress include 
helping to pass the Voting Rights 
Advancement Act of 2019 through 
the House of Representatives, which 
holds individual states accountable for 
restrictive voter registration and vot-
ing practices, and co-sponsoring the 
Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights 
Crimes Reauthorization Act of 2016, 
which devotes FBI and DOJ resources 
to solving civil rights-related cold cases 
for hate crimes like lynchings. 

Meanwhile, one of Stephens’s 

greatest “accomplishments” is his 
fiery Cornerstone Speech, which he 
delivered in Georgia in the weeks 
before the attack of Fort Sumter. 
This speech is credited as one of the 
clearest explanations of the Con-
federate system of government, and 
a key factor behind the galvaniza-
tion of pro-Confederate sentiment 
heading into the Civil War. In this 
speech, Stephens declared that slav-
ery — i.e. the “great truth that the 
negro is not equal to the white man” 
— was the “cornerstone” (hence the 
oration’s nickname) of the Confed-
erate States of America and that the 
“natural and moral condition” of 
Black enslavement was what made 
the Confederacy truly great. These 
are the horrifying words of the 
kind of man who would have been 
Lewis’s worst enemy. The fact that 
Georgia believes that someone 
who would say this is “worthy of 
national commemoration” is sim-
ply nauseating and in desperate 
need of rectification.

As previously stated, even as a 

young man, Lewis was constantly 
fighting for improving the treat-
ment of his own community. In 
Morrill’s own words, one of the most 
important factors behind whether 
a statue should be enshrined in 
Statuary Hall is their commitment 
to improving our democracy in 
the form of “distinguished civic … 
services.” What bigger civic duty 

is there than getting Americans to 
vote? Lewis spent much of his time 
with SNCC attempting to have 
Black Americans registered to vote 
in spite of racist poll taxes and litera-
cy tests, and his skull was even frac-
tured by Alabama police while he 
was protesting for the original 1965 
Voting Rights Act in Selma, Ala., 
near the Edmund Pettus Bridge. 
In Lewis’s own words, “the right 
to vote is precious … the vote is the 
most powerful, non-violent tool we 
have in a democratic society.”

On the other hand, and this 

should not be surprising at this 
point, Stephens continued to be a 
callous racist after the Civil War 
ended. He was elected to Congress 
representing Georgia from 1873 to 
1882 and then became the gover-
nor of Georgia from 1882 until his 
death in 1883. He was influential 
in Georgia politics during a post-
Reconstruction period that saw a 
resurgence of white supremacy and 
a litany of Black voting restrictions, 
such as the 1877 poll tax require-
ment which, although abolished in 
1945, was similar to the one Lewis 
fought against decades later.

This article does not even begin 

to cover how incredible and effec-
tive John Lewis was as an activist 
and legislator. In addition to his vot-
ing rights and congressional work, 
he led legendary sit-ins against seg-
regation across the country, and was 
one of the original Freedom Riders 
protesting the segregation of bus 
stations in the South. After Lewis’s 
death, current Georgia Gov. Brian 
Kemp related a statement praising 
him as a “Civil Rights hero, freedom 
fighter, devoted public servant, and 
beloved Georgian who changed our 
world in a profound way.” 

However, while many members of 

Congress are trying to get rid of Con-
federate statues in the Capitol, currently 
only a state’s government can officially 
remove and replace that state’s statue. 
With that in mind, everything Kemp 
said about Lewis would be utterly 
hypocritical if he continued to allow 
Stephens — the anti-Lewis if there ever 
was one — to represent Georgia in the 
Capitol. If Georgians really believe that 
Lewis was a beloved member of their 
state, they need to act as soon as possible 
and purge the stain of the Confederacy 
from their public memorials, starting 
with Stephens, and end this purge with 
new memorials to the right people, like 
Congressman John Lewis.

The kind of person who needs a statue: John Lewis

Tuhin Chakraborty can be reached 

at tchakra@umich.edu.

