Monumental Lies (Update)

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, but the Confederacy didn't completely die with it. Monuments, shrines and museums are found throughout the South. We teamed up with Type Investigations to visit dozens of them and found that for devoted followers, they inspire a disturbing – and distorted – view of history: Confederate generals as heroes. Slaves who were happy to work for them. That twisted history is also shared with schoolchildren on class trips. And you won't believe who's funding these sites to keep them running.

Plus, the story of New Mexico’s great monument controversy. In 1998, the state was set to celebrate its cuarto centenario: the 400th anniversary of the state’s colonization by the Spanish. But a dramatic act of vandalism would turn the making of a monument in Albuquerque into a fight over history the city didn’t expect.

This show has been updated with new reporting, based on a show that originally was broadcast Dec. 8, 2018.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Alexan.
0:07.0	It's been nearly three months since George Floyd died in police custody, and the protests are still going strong.
0:14.0	I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe!
0:28.0	In the days right after Floyd's death, many of the protests focused on one of the most concrete symbols of white supremacy. Statues.
0:37.0	From small towns to big cities, dozens of statues of segregationists and slave owners, conquistadors and Confederate soldiers have been removed.
0:46.0	Sometimes by public officials, but sometimes by angry crowds.
0:51.0	I want to take you now to a live look. This is on Monument Avenue. We were told that the Jefferson Davis statue, as you can see here, has been toppled.
1:01.0	Jefferson Davis was the Confederate president. His statue was one of many along a main boulevard in Richmond, Virginia.
1:09.0	The city is famous for these statues. They've been a big draw for people who visit the former capital of the Confederacy, sometimes bearing Confederate flags.
1:19.0	Now, as these statues are coming down, you'll hear people, including President Trump, continue to defend them.
1:26.0	Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, to fame our heroes, erase our values.
1:34.0	But what version of history is being protected and who's paying to keep it alive?
1:40.0	Back in 2018, we teamed up with type investigations to answer those questions.
1:44.0	Reporters Brian Palmer and Seth Friedwessler visited more than 50 Confederate sites, including another place honoring Jefferson Davis,
1:53.0	is former home in Baluxi, Mississippi, and a state called Beauvoir.
1:58.0	It's one of the city's most popular attractions, hosting school field trips, tourists, even weddings.
2:05.0	As the debate over Confederate monuments heats up, we're going to re-air that story.
2:10.0	We begin with Brian and Seth visiting the grounds of Beauvoir in 2018, during its annual fall muster, a mocks of war battle. Here's Seth.
2:23.0	Brian and I decide to take different cars to Beauvoir and spend the next two days reporting separately.
2:29.0	As a white reporter, I blend in here, where aside from some of the school kids, almost everyone is white.
2:35.0	It had been like that at more than a dozen other Confederate sites I visited for this story. But for Brian, it was different.
2:42.0	As an African-American reporter, I stick out. I feel that people see black before they see anything else.
	...

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