[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Well in this country, we elect officials who preside either as executive actors or in some legislative body. Those people vote on things as a group and it's usually majority rule, but not always. In some cases, you have leaders of educational institutions who can make those decisions on their own or with an appointed board of some sort. Generally speaking, that's who draws these lines.

And in those communities that handle this well, those elected or university officials and other community leaders will facilitate hard but necessary conversations in the community about the statues, the meanings that they had and the meanings that they have now.

Originally Posted by JonInKC

What Frederick Douglas thought is anecdotal. I could quote someone with a differing opinion and it would bring no more or less of anything of value to the discussion.

Informed viewpoints—and I think that the viewpoint of Frederick Douglass qualifies as "informed"—always bring something valuable to the conversation. In this case, it illustrates how at least one former slave, and probably many more former slaves, viewed and experienced the canonization of Lee. It also serves as a reminder of the majority's indifference and even antagonism to that point of view.

Originally Posted by Sciencewoman

And now I'm going to "rail" it -- given Kevin's comments about Robert E. Lee not being comfortable with war memorials, I wonder what he would think about the sculpture of himself in Lee Chapel, lying in repose on a camp bed. It reminds me of the tombs of some English monarchs. It was installed in 1975, and the sculptor Edward Valentine seems to have focused on famous southerners in his work.

I've also wondered what he would think about the "party shuttle bus" at W&L being named after his horse, Traveller. It's a clever name for a bus, but given Lee's personal focus on honor, it just seems...wrong.

My guess is he would be horrified by the former, which really is way over the top, and saddened by the latter.