Sep 9, 2017 3 min read

I have continuously written and preached from my pulpit that there is nothing of the American spirit about white supremacists. Such beliefs are vile, wretched, wicked, perverse and indefensible if one is a biblical Christian or any other sensible person of goodwill.

It is undeniable that there have been and still are individuals or even small groups who hold and espouse hateful and ungodly racial prejudice. But this does not mean that, as some allege, that there is open, flagrant, and institutionalized mistreatment of blacks in America. Neither does this prove that most white Americans are latently and willfully prejudiced against blacks. These false and incendiary charges of continuous and current white oppression of minorities can only diminish the real, pervasive, and inexcusable historic mistreatment of black people. Of this past despicable conduct, our nation was guilty and it has shamed us. But that was then and this is another time.

I have been blessed with many native southern friends and acquaintances, both black and white, after living for nearly seven years in South Carolina and Georgia. I do not know of a single one of them – which I realize proves nothing – who believes the numerous statues and monuments of Confederate soldiers found throughout the South pose a subtle but pervasive inclination to honor or return to any part of the past horrendous evils of slavery.

Many have noted that “a land without monuments is a land without a history.” Civil War monument-building in both the North and the South peaked between 1885 and the early 1900s. In the South, these monuments seemed to lessen the bitterness of the memory of the Confederate defeat, which was often seen as emasculating and shameful. The memorials were not so much tokens of a “lost cause,” nor were they a visual reminder of the evils of slavery. What then? Could they not rather have been an effort to symbolize a Confederate soldier’s devotion to family, his loyalty to a cause and comrades, and his willingness to sacrifice his all for the sake of preserving what he saw as personal liberty?

In spite of all the chaos and screeching of activists and radicals, our Constitution and fair-mindedness ought to insist that each town lawfully and peaceably decide if they want to keep their statues and monuments.

William “Ed” Nicholson

Dunbar

Nicholson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Chapel in Dunbar.