Aug 27, 2017 2 min read

Generations of African-Americans, born after the destruction of Jim Crow laws and the enactment of civil rights legislation, most likely do not think about the reason Confederate statues and monuments really exist.

They never felt the humiliation of ill-treatment black people endured everywhere in the racist South. The true intention of the monuments were to intimidate African-Americans. White southerners wanted to remind them that, although Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and the Constitution guaranteed their citizenship, black people needed to be made painfully aware that they were in the South, and whites had awesome powers to discriminate against them.

Only a blind fool cannot see that there are vocal and violent racist bigots who would gleefully take us back 100 years into the social and political dark ages of this country’s shameful past. I cannot think of any other government on this globe that has allowed the losers of a rebellion to erect statues and monuments in honor of those who took up arms against the established government. Artifacts that were intentionally designed to degrade and intimidate need to be removed from public places and grounds.

All African-Americans are citizens of the United States. There exists no such thing as second-class citizenship. All attempts to re-establish anything other than full citizenship, with all its legal dignity and rights, must be resisted vehemently. If that includes the removal of artifacts from the public square that create rallying points for oppressors of universal political freedom, then so be it!

Ronald J. Yamka

Canonsburg