Back in the Day

The other day while looking at a Facebook site devoted to Chicago, I came across a post accompanied by this picture. The post's author asked if anyone recognized the building on the left of the frame. "Ooh, ooh..." I said to myself "...I do I do". I scrolled down the responses to see if anyone else recognized the building with the distinctive tower. One person suggested it was the iconic Wrigley Building on the north bank of the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue. Another suggested the London Guarantee Building directly across the river. Still another thought it was the Jewelers Building one block to the west. The wisenheimer in me was ecstatic as I would get to tell everyone they were wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I don't always take delight in correcting people, but truth be told, sometimes I do. However many years ago I learned from a close associate that that behavior is unbecoming, especially when it is accompanied by smug overconfidence, which apparently I exhibited when I corrected him one too many times. These days whenever I'm with friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues or perfect strangers, I usually keep my cards close to the vest, not interrupting all but the most egregious factual errors, and sometimes I even let those go. But online is different. While I appreciate my friend's advice, there is still satisfaction every once in a while to come out and say that someone is, pardon the expression, full of shit. That's probably why social media has become so damn popular, the anonymity it provides gives us the opportunity to act like a jackass without being publicly outed as such. If you don't believe me, just check out the comment section of any YouTube post.

Anyway, the confusion about the building is understandable, given that it, like the three Facebook suggestions was built in the Beaux Arts style which was popular in the first decades of the 20th Century when these buildings were created. What threw everybody off no doubt was the assumption that the building is in Chicago. It is not. It is the Municipal Building in Lower Manhattan. I know that to be true because I know the building well, as it was from the cupola at the pimmacle of the Municipal Building where I made the original cover photogaph for the book, The Architectural Guidebook to New York City, written by Francis Morrone.

Here is the picture I made from the top of the Municipal Building, you can see the shadow of the cupola where I was standing at the lower right of the frame:

You don't have to know anything about New York City architecture to realize this picture was made before September 11, 2001. It was in fact made in September, 1992, one year before the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center via a bomb placed in a rented truck parked underneath the North Tower (in this picture, the tower on the right) in 1993. That attack took the lives of six people. Engineers at the time speculated that had the truck been parked in a more strategic spot when the bomb was detonated, there was a chance the blast might have weakened the structure to the point where it could have brought the building down. My photograph took on a new meaning after that. The truth is, before that first bombing, I never much cared for the World Trade Center; in fact for the sake of the picture at the time I shot it, I would have preferred if the two towers had not been there at all, leaving the frame dominated by that great work of early 20th Century architecture, the Woothworth Building, and New York's glorious City Hall, built in the first half of the 19th Century, seen at the bottom of the frame.

But the thought that one of the towers could have collapsed, taking with it the lives of tens of thousands of people, rocked me to the core and I never looked at that complex the same way again. I'll never forget the last time I laid eyes on the WTC. I was in a taxi en route to Newark Airport. We had just emerged from the New Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel, the sun was setting and its bright rays reflected off the towers making them glow like two enormous golden beacons. For the first time I saw those buildings as beautiful and I resolved to photograph them from across the Hudson in exactly the same light when I returned to New York. Needless to say, that never happened.

Life for everyone, everywhere changed in both enormous, and infinitisimally small ways after that dreadful late summer day in 2001. I was reminded of one of the small ways when I decided to respond to that Facebook thread.

I didn't have a readily available picture of my own of the Municipal Building to provethat I had the right building, so I asked Google to come up with one for me. It brought up a site that not only showed the building, but described the remarkable privilege of being able to set foot in the "off limits" Municipal Building cupola and view what is certainly one of the most spectacular vistas in the city.

Here is a link to that site.

I did feel incredibly privileged to experience that amazing view, but it certainly was not off limits 28 years ago. In fact I was flabbergasted at how easy it was to get up there. Here's how I did it: I walked into the building, hopped aboard an elevator and took it as far as it would go. I got off and found another elevator that said, "tower elevator" and rode to its  top floor. Then I walked up a few flights of stairs, saw a door, opened it and there I was. There were plenty of people around, but no one said boo to me. Once outside, making sure I had something in place to prop the door open, (as didn't want to be trapped out there),  I had Manhattan, Jersey City, and part of Brooklyn all to myself, or so it seemed. It was one of the most exhilerating experiences of my life.

I knew immediately that I wanted a photograph of the view toward the the WTC and Woolworth Building, just one of many amazing views from that spot, to be the cover of our book. So I returned on a subsequent trip with a large format camera and holders filled with color film. The rig necessary for the cover photograph included a tripod, a camera bag, and a large box containing the camera. This I was sure would draw stares but once again I walked into the building and boarded the elevator with no one paying the least attention to me. Like most photographers in the days before 9/11, I felt that in order to get the picture, it was usually better to ask forgiveness rather than permission. Today that cavalier attitude can get you into serious trouble. But even then, the ease with which I was able to access this amazing place, left me feeling a little uneasy. So I told a building engineer what I planned to do and asked if was OK. He couldn't have been nicer and told me that workers in the building go out there for lunch all the time, just make sure the door didn't lock behind me. I didn't let on that I already knew that, and went about my business.

I don't know exactly when the cupola of the Municiapl Building became "off limits" to regular folks. I'm guessing that after the first WTC attack just a half mile away, at the very least my closed bag and big box would have drawn the attention of security.

After the 9/11 attacks all bets were off, everywhere. Here in Chicago, buildings that had always opened their doors to the public, ceased to do so. Even the magnificent lobbies of architectural gems such as the Rookery Building, hands down the highlight of any tour of Chicago's Loop, were inaccessible to all but officially sanctioned tour groups.

Things have loosened up a bit 18 years since the attacks, but I'm guessing we'll never have the same access to buildings, even ones considered public, that we once did.

I'm not going to trivialize the memory of the lives of people lost to terrorist attacks by complaining about not being able to wander around buildings the way we used to back in the day. It is a small price to pay to help keep people and our cities safe. But along with the hightened security, something significant has been lost. I'll give one specific example.

The US Capitol Building in Washington DC is probably the most important physical symbol of American Democracy. It's no coincidence that Pierre L'Infant placed this house of the people, not the house of the Chief Executive, precisely at the center of his design for the nation's capital city. Thomas Walter's magnificent dome was constructed during the Civil War as a symbol of the continuity of the republic, despite the great cost and grave situation that was taking place at the time. And despite a number of violent incidents that took place in and about the building over the years, from its original construction in the late eighteenth century until quite recently, this people's house used to be open to the general public to wander about for the most part, as they pleased.

I have fond memories of visiting the Capitol, walking up the same steps where presidents traditionally were sworn into office*. Once at the top of those stairs the public could walk through the doors of the East Front (in later years through metal detectors) directly into the Great Rotunda where the bodies of presidents from Abraham Lincoln to George H.W. Bush have lain in state, as well as a very small handful of significant Americans such as Rosa Parks who have lain there in honor. From the Rotunda you could wander into National Statuary Hall where each state contributed two likenesses of its favorite sons or daughters. There you could stand upon a marker on the floor and if you listened closely, hear conversations taking place on the opposite side of the great hall. That unintentional echo chamber was an architectural feature that early 19th Century congressmen took advantage of, listening in to the private conversations of their unsuspecting rivals on the other side of the hall, back when the room severed as the chamber for the House of Representatives.  

If you kept moving south, you could enter the current House Chamber even when that legislative body was in session. That chamber is one of the most recognizable interiors in the United States as it is the setting for all joint sessions of Congress including the president's annual State of the Union address. 

When I first visited the Capitol over thirty years ago, it was a little more complicated to get into the Senate Chamber on the other side of the building as you needed to obtain a pass from one of your senators. But that was hardly a problem as you could descend into the basement and hop aboard the Capitol subway which would shuttle you to and from the Senate office Building a few blocks away.

Granted it is still possible for the general public to visit the US Capitol Building, but access is greatly limited. Not only can you no longer enter the building from the East Front, but if you so much as attempt to climb the stairs leading up to it, you will be stopped by security personnel. To gain access to the building, ordinary folks have to enter the US Capitol Visitors Center a half block away. 

Here is a link to a video produced by the CVC as an orientation to what you can expect, and what you cannot expect when you visit the Capitol Building. 

As you can see, the CVC is a user friendly place that educates as well as serves as an entrance portal to the House of the People. Today, it is much like a museum with a plethora of exhibits, a cafeteria, and of course a gift shop. Naturally you can also visit the Capitol Building, but only under the watchful eye of a tour guide, no more wandering about on your own.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that access to the Capitol has been restricted, albeit in a palatable, even enjoyable fashion. After all, the building was likely the target of hijackers who commandeered the fourth airliner during the September 11th attacks, and was spared only by the quick thinking, selfless and heroic actions of the passengers of United Flight 93 who took out the hijackers, crashing the plane in the process just outside of Shanksburg, PA.  One shudders to think of the profound psychological damage the loss of that building would have been to the American psyche, especially on top of the carnage that already took place in New York, and just across the Potomac in Arlington, VA. No greater monument to the victim/heroes of Flight 93 could possibly exist than the Capitol Building itself. 

But constructon of the CVC (which had been on the drawing board for years) was put into action in response to another attack, one that took place at the Capitol in 1998, when a gunman stormed through the metal detectors and shot and killed two Capitol police officers. The bodies of the two men, Officer Jacob Chestnut and Detective John Gibson were themselves laid in honor inside the Capitol Rotunda.

Clearly the creation of the CVC was a prudent move to control crowds and provide security to the Capitol Building and the people inside it. From all appearances (I have never set foot inside), the Visitor Center seems to be a tremendous success from a design standpoint, as well as a crowd pleasing tourist attraction.

However I wonder how well it truly serves the Capitol and its role as the symbolic house of the people. My most memorable visit was in the mid-nineties when I had the opportunity to show a friend from Germany around. As I had already taken the official tour, I played guide and showed him the Rotunda, the hall of statues with its echo chamber, and the House Chamber which he recognized from internationally televised speeches. What truly impressed him was that despite this building being the center of government of a great nation, anyone, young or old, rich or poor, black or white, powerful or meek, could walk right in and make themselves at home, and if they so chose, rub elbows with a law maker and offer him or her a piece of their mind. 

Which come to think about it, is what participatory government is all about and what made our Capitol unique.

That part has been lost.

It's true that the CVC provides convenience, creature comforts and a meaningful visitor experience. As the orientation video points out, visitors to the Capitol no longer have to wait in long lines braving the elements just to get in, and have plenty of ammeneties to entertain themselves while they wait to get inside the Capitol. When they finallly make to the great building, they don't have to worry about figuring where to go, their guide will take care of all that for them.

As as attraction, the US Capitol has become another item on the bucket list of Washington attractions to check off.

What we no longer experience there, is the feeling of ownership. While the building belongs to the people of the United States, limiting its access to officially sanctioned tours means the public has been relegated to the role of casual observer, rather than active participant. In that sense, the US Capitol might just as well be another museum, the Kremlin, or a brewery,

More concerning is that limited access means legislators get to do their work in more seclusion than than ever before. It's no secret that our particpatory government has always been subverted by money, special interests, and less than scrupulous politicians. But by constantly bumping into everyday Americans at their place of business, be it in the hallways, eating places or the Capitol subway, lawmakers at least would be reminded to whom they ultimately have to answer. Well, not so much today.

They say that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. There are always tradeoffs, and in our world we are faced with the constant choice between freedom and safety, two ideals which are mutually exclusive. We can have a perfectly safe world but not without giving up our liberty. Likewise a perfectly free world would be impossible without unacceptable risks. Therefore a balance must be struck.

As I said, the growth of terrorism, both foreign and home grown, has affected us in big and small ways. Limiting access to our government by restricting public access to the Capitol may seem like a small price to pay for helping keep us safe. On the other hand, if we keep whittling away our liberties in small inperceptable pieces, bit by bit, everntually there will be none left.

Just something to think about.

*Presidential inaugurations (not including intra-term ceremonies following the death or resignation of a president)  took place on the East Steps of the Capitol Building from the swearing-in of Andrew Jackson in 1829 until the 1980 inauguration of Ronald Reagan when they were moved to the West Front which faces the National Mall. 

Should They Stay or Should They Go?

I have a running bet with a friend who claims we'll have hell to pay now that they've started removing statues of Confederate heroes in the South. He believes that before you know it, we'll be removing likenesses up here of presidents who owned slaves, explorers who abused the people they "discovered" and just about every statue in town that offends somebody, which when you come to think of it, is probably every statue in town.

We didn't set terms but I've already offered to pay the dollar I owe him as after we made the bet, before you could say Jack Robinson, activists made demands that the Daniel Chester French equestrian statue of George Washington in Chicago, which has stood in front of his namesake park for over one hundred years, be removed from view. George Washington owned slaves of course, as did several presidents including U.S .Grant who owned one slave while he lived at his wife's family plantation in St. Louis. The man's name was William Jones, and Grant freed him shortly before the Civil War. I have yet to hear any demand to remove Chicago's monument to Ulysses S. Grant, but that day may be coming.

To my knowledge we don't have statues of other slave holding presidents in Chicago but plenty of things named after them, and other problematic historical figures. We have Washington Park and Jackson Park on the South side, and Douglas Park on the West, named after Steven Douglas, the Illinois senator and proponent of slavery, who lost the 1860 presidential election to Abraham Lincoln.

The South Side pastor who suggested that George Washington and his horse come down, also suggested that streets and parks named after these problematic figures be re-named. To ease the pain, he gave a simple solution to the problem. Instead of changing the names of the parks and roads, all we'd have to do is re-dedicate these places to more appropriate people who happen to share last names. So for example, Washington Park could become Harold Washington Park, (after the city's first African American mayor), Jackson Park cold become Jesse or Michael Jackson Park (after the civil rights activist or the King of Pop). and Douglas Park could become Frederick Douglass Park, and all they'd have to do is add one "s" to the common name.  So far I haven't heard mention of the community of Jefferson Park being re-dedicated in honor of the blues guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson but that may be in our future as well.

I make light of this knowing full well that there are people who are quite sincere about reconsidering tributes to people who owned slaves. Why shouldn't they be? Slavery was a blight upon this nation and its history.

But while I truly believe there are legitimate arguments for considering the future of monuments of people who did things in their lives we don't like, I do see clear distinctions between the removal of monuments to Confederate leaders, and other monuments. For me, the most compelling difference is this: we celebrate people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because of their significance in the founding of our nation, despite their shortcomings, including owning slaves. By contrast, people such as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee are celebrated precisely because of the cause they took up. That cause was directly tied to the perpetuation of the institution of slavery, As public monuments represent the ideals of a community, I am in complete agreement with the idea that communities that continue to honor Confederate leaders with monuments in public places, are also implicitly condoning slavery, and other civil rights abuses.

I realize that to some, this distinction may be purely academic. A valid argument could be made that everyone who participated in the institution of slavery is implicit, and therefore, equally deserving of moral condemnation. Following that argument, that would include paradoxically, the man who second only to Abraham.Lincoln, was most directly responsible for the end of slavery in this country, Ulysses S. Grant.

For the record, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel discounted that argument, saying the issue of removing George Washington from his place of honor in Chicago is a "non starter." My guess is that this is not the end of the story. Regardless, the voices of people who would remove statues of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and others, deserve to be heard, and I strongly believe  this is a conversation worth having, regardless of my opposition to removing those monuments.

Thanks to the mayor, George Washington is safe for now, but there are two other controversial Chicago monuments that might have a date with destiny.

Until a few weeks ago, few Chicagoans knew their city had not only a monument to Fascism, but also a bona fide Confederate Monument.

Perhaps the most momentous event that took place during the 1933-34 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, was the culmination of a trans-Atlantic flight of a squadron of 24 seaplanes, under the command of Italo Balbo. A staunch anti-communist, Balbo became one of the early supporters of the Partito Nazionale Fascista, or PNF, the Italian Fascist Party. As one of the leaders of the 1922 March on Rome which resulted in a bloodless coup, Balbo was instrumental in bringing the PNF to power in Italy, and Benito Mussolini, the prime ministership of that country. By the 1930s Balbo, who trained as an aviator during WW I, was the Minister of the Italian Air Force and had already one trans-Atlantic crossing under his belt.

The 1933 trip was an eight leg journey originating in Rome, with stops in Europe and Canada before landing in Lake Michigan beside the fair grounds, the present site of Northerly Island. Balbo and his flight were received with a great deal of fanfare including a massive parade and a street named in his honor. So appreciative of all the fuss, the following year Mussolini, who at the time, by every measure of the term, was the dictator of a totalitarian Italy, sent Chicago a present in the form of a monument consisting of a 2,000 year old column  that was removed from the port city of Ostia on the outskirts of Rome. Upon its arrival, the column sitting atop a pedestal, was placed in front of the Italian Pavilion at the Fair. There, the  ancient column stood in stark contrast to the pavilion, a stunning work of Modernism designed by Alexander Capraro. Well Modernism be damned, the pavilion and the rest of the fair buildings disappeared shortly after the Century of Progress closed late in 1934, but the column atop its pedestal remained as the only surviving remnant of the exposition.

Chicago's (in)famous Balbo Monument along the Lakefront Bike Path

And there it remains, long after Italy and its Fascist government joined forces with the Axis powers in the late thirties: Japan who invaded Pearl Harbor, and Adolph Hitler's Germany. Despite being at war with Italy and the government who gave us the monument, no one ever thought to take it down during World War II. Despite the post-war Italian government's strong suggestion the city take down the monument to the regime that brought its country to ruin, it kept standing. And despite the occasional request from concerned citizens for 72 years since the end of World War II, Chicago's Fascist monument still stands today, ironically just a few steps away from a stadium dedicated to the men and women of the U.S. armed services, Soldier Field.

Today if you look really hard, you can still read these words inscribed on the pedestal:

The inscription worn by years of exposure to the elements,
extolling the glories of Balbo, Mussolini and Fascism.

Fascist Italy, by command of Benito Mussolini
presents to Chicago
exaltation symbol memorial
of the Atlantic Squadron led by Balbo
that with Roman daring, flew across the ocean
in the 11th year
of the Fascist era

In the current placement of the monument, there does seem to be one concession to its controversial nature. The object is turned ninety degrees so that the Italian inscription on the base does not face the lakefront bike path upon which the monument resides. An English translation, which is now barely legible from erosion due to the elements, is on the side directly opposite the path.

Today in light of the removal of the Southern statues, a new movement has emerged to remove the Balbo monument. Spearheaded by Chicago aldermen Ed Burke, and Gilbert Villegas, who himself just learned of the monument's existence a few weeks ago, the Balbo monument is once again in the news, if just barely.

So should it stay or should it go? Well on purely philosophical terms, I'd say there is no question that if we're going to remove statues of Confederate leaders who were themselves, enemies of the United States, then a monument to a foreign enemy, with direct ties to Hitler no less, really has no place in a public park in Chicago. For consistency's sake alone, I can't think of any good reason not to move it to a museum or other venue where it can be placed into a more appropriate context.

To get to the Italian inscription on the base
you have to walk around the black fence.
The English interpretation is on the left,
 hidden from the view of casual passersby. 

On the other hand, unlike the vast outpouring of emotion and rightful indignation over the Confederate monuments, especially after the disgusting white supremacist rally around a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville last month, public emotion in Chicago over the Balbo monument is barely a trickle if that. To my knowledge it has never been a rallying point for black shirted neo-Fascists proclaiming the glories of Il Duce. Despite it being located in Chicago's front yard near one of the city's premier sports venues, it is quite off the beaten path, seen mostly by cyclists and runners who manage only a quick glace as they zip on by. If you're intent on seeing it, you really have to seek it out.

The monument is an anomaly, a side-show story in the history of this city, an interesting, if strange and somewhat macabre attraction. If it were removed from the park, probably few people would miss it. My guess is that like dozens of times before, there will be a little fuss made over the appropriateness of the Balbo Monument, then something more pressing will come up, and it will be forgotten again. It's kind of like the old radio gag, Fibber McGee's Closet, where every time the hall closet door is opened at 79 Wistful Vista, all the contents comes spilling out onto the floor. Likewise, every time the subject of the Balbo Monument comes up, Chicago's response is just like McGee's: "I gotta clean out that closet one of these days." Of course, he never does.

I may be going out on a limb here, but I expect my grandchildren to be around to see the Balbo monument standing in precisely the same spot where it stands today.

-

As strange as a Fascist monument in Chicago's front yard may sound, the thought of a Confederate monument in the predominantly African American community of Grand Crossing, in a cemetery that bears the earthly remains of African American icons including Harold Washington, Jesse Owens, Thomas Dorsey and Ida B. Wells, may seem truly bizarre.

But Confederate Mound's existence in Oak Woods Cemetery is anything but bizarre. During the Civil War, Camp Douglas, on property belonging to the aforementioned Steven A. Douglas, served as a prison camp for Confederate soldiers. Conditions at the camp were wretched and thousands of prisoners died while in confinement due to starvation, exposure, scurvy, cholera, smallpox, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and numerous other maladies. Bodies of soldiers were mercilessly dumped in the lake, only to have them wash up on the shore, or buried in shallow ground without coffins. Others were sold off for medical experiments. In all, the official death toll at Camp Douglas was listed at  4,454, but the number is certainly higher.. It is estimated that the death rate at the camp was approximately 17 percent of all prisoners confined there.

After the war, the bodies interred in Camp Douglas were moved to the old City Cemetery, the present site of Lincoln Park. The constant flooding of that site necessitated the closing of that cemetery and the remains were moved again, this time to the new Oak Woods Cemetery on the Chicago's south side. There, roughly six thousand bodies were re-interred in concentric rows within a two-acre plot, purchased by the Federal Government in 1867. Along with the Confederate soldiers, the bodies of twelve unidentified Union prison guards are buried in what is said to be the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere.

In the 1890s a monument was proposed for the grave site and contributions were solicited from all over the country. The completed monument consists of a likeness of a Confederate Army soldier standing atop a forty foot tower. The base of the tower holds plaques with the names of 4,275 men known to have perished at Fort Douglas. Five gravestones in front of the tower commemorate the roughly 1,500 unidentified soldiers buried at the site. Four cannons, one pyramid made of cannonballs, and a pole flying the American Flag. stand around the perimeter of the site.

The monument to the roughly 6,000 men who perished in Fort Douglas from 1861 to 1865 was dedicated on Memorial Day, 1895. Present at the dedication were President Grover Cleveland, his entire cabinet, and about 100,000 spectators.

Confederate Mound has been brought up sporadically in light of the recent controversy surrounding the removal of the Confederate monuments. Daily Southtown reporter Ted Slowik questioned in a op-ed piece in the Chicago Tribune why there hasn't been more controversy surrounding Confederate Mound. In his piece, Slowik examines both sides over why Chicago's Confederate monument should or should not be controversial. He points out that the monument over the gravesite, the work of General John C. Underwood, head of the United Confederate Veterans division west of the Alleghenies, was built at a time when nostalgia, rather than a critical examination of the past was the rule of the day, at least regarding the Civil War. He takes it one step further with this sinister tidbit:

Many Confederate monuments were put up during the Jim Crow era to intimidate blacks, 

That was certainly true in the south where there was growing resentment by whites of black people whom they felt "didn't know their place." I'm not so sure that sentiment would apply to Confederate Mound as the African American population of Chicago in the 1890s was relatively low and the few black people who did live here at the time, were integrated into the rest of the population. Of course that all changed during the Great Migration of the 1910s when the tens of thousands of African Americans looking for better opportunities up north, came to Chicago and found themselves forced into over-crowded, restricted ghettos on the south side. Virulent racism, at least the kind that would inspire the building of a monument to Confederate soldiers just to prove who's boss, wouldn't have been much of an issue in Chicago, at least not in the 1890s.

Slowik then comes upon another, more logical reason to build the monument in Chicago:

But Confederate Mound represents something different: an effort by Congress to encourage reconciliation.

The need to reconcile, to heal the old wounds of the Civl War was not a new idea in the 1890s. It goes all the way back to just before the end of the war, March 4, 1865 to be exact, when Abraham Lincoln stood before the east portico of the U.S. Capitol Building and ended his second inaugural address with these words:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Those words were put into action just one month later at the courthouse at Appomattox, Virginia after Ulysses S. Grant accepted Robert E. Lee's unconditional surrender. Rather than having the Confederate general led away in chains to be prosecuted as a traitor, Grant gave Lee and his generals their freedom, allowing them to walk away from the courthouse with their dignity intact, their swords still in their scabbards.

For his part, Lee, who also recognized the need for reconciliation, would go to his grave insisting that the people of the South NOT erect monuments to the leaders of the lost cause and go on fighting the Civil War, but rather live their lives as devoted Americans. Sadly, he never got his wish.

I think it is fitting that Confederate Mound exists here in Chicago. It is not a war monument, nor is it a monument to the Confederacy, not by a long shot. Rather it is an elegy to wasted lives. We may hate the cause they fought and died for, but it makes no sense to hate the men of the South who are buried at Oak Woods Cemetery. They were I have no doubt, to a man, caught up in a struggle that was far beyond their control. Some of them may have supported slavery, others may have not, fighting the battle because they felt it was their duty. It's very likely that since they are buried up in Chicago and not down home, few if any of them owned slaves. Regardless, who are we to judge them?

We can go on all we like about the South bearing responsibility for their soldiers' fate, refusing prisoner exchanges because they did not consider captured black Union soldiers as soldiers, or about the fact that back in the day, African American people were not permitted to be buried in Oak Woods Cemetery. Those are both injustices. But as the gravestones note, the men buried here, roughly 6000 Confederate and 12 Union soldiers, were all American soldiers. They lie underneath the American flag. They died horrific deaths in our city, on American soil, in the alleged care of other Americans. The least we can do for these men is give them the dignity in death that they did not receive in life. Removing the monument above their final resting place would also be an injustice, that in no way would alleviate the other injustices.

-

Yes the removal of the Confederate monuments in the South is indeed a slippery slope. It has the potential of opening up a Pandora's box of issues regarding other monuments around the country. Well so be it. Every monument in this country has its own history, and its own meaning. We shouldn't make decrees saying that all statues that commemorate X must be taken down while all those commemorating Y must stay. Nor should we demand that every statue must remain precisely where it stands for perpetuity.  We must not dismiss wholesale the feelings of our fellow citizens for whom some monuments represent the oppression of their people. Yet we are doing ourselves a disservice to insist that every statue that offends somebody must be removed.

Fortunately we have the tools at our disposal in the form of an active local citizenry, a free press, and locally elected representative governments to address the issues of monuments that no longer represent the values of a community. For the time being anyway, we live in an open society that tolerates the expression of different views. We have ears, as long as we are willing to use them, to listen to different points of view. Hopefully we have compassion to be open to, even if we don't necessarily agree with, the views of others. No public monument should be off limits to at the very least, discussion about its role in the community.

Most important we have brains that, when they are not corrupted by prejudice, intolerance and obsessive ideology, are more than capable of figuring out which statues should stay, and which ones should go.

Maybe it's time to start using them.

Decoration Day

The bookends of summer in the United States are two very important holidays, Memorial Day and Labor Day. They are especially important because they both commemorate people whose contributions and sacrifices to this country have enabled all of us to live in relative freedom and prosperity, blessings that most of us take for granted today. A good example of that is how many of us confuse the two holidays. Just the other day before the long weekend, more than one person wished me a happy Labor Day.

Like everything these days it seems, Memorial Day has been politicised. It has now become de-rigeur in some circles to chastise folks who wish each other a "Happy Memorial Day." No, this is not a happy day of  frivolity they say, it is a day of solemn remembrance of our servicemen and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Well it certainly is that, but it does seem to be rather heavy handed to insist that it cannot be both a day of remembrance, and a day to celebrate. After all the men and women who served AND died in their service, did not die so that we would forever be in their debt (that part goes without saying), they died so that we could be free.

Memorial Day has its roots in ancient customs of special days devoted to visiting cemeteries and decorating the graves dead loved ones. The most famous of these events, one that is very much alive and well to this day, is Dia de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, which is celebrated in Mexico between October 31st and November 2nd. The holiday is anything but a solemn day of mourning, but a a day of celebration and festivities, designed to re-connect those of us in the land of the living, with our loved ones who have gone to their eternal reward.

Foreign as these festivities may seem today to those of us who do not share that particular culture, most cultures had similar festivities involving gathering at cemeteries to honor the dead and to maintain the graves of loved ones. These days were called Decoration Days. In the days before cemeteries that insured the perpetual maintenance of gravesites, these events not only helped bond the living with the dead, but also provided a means to maintain their graves, preventing them from being swallowed up by nature.

The established American practice of a Decoration Day to honor the war dead, probably began in the South during the Civil War where the tradition of setting aside a day to lay flowers at the graves of fallen soldiers took place, The practice was picked up sporadically in the North as well. No American war was as costly as our Civil War where over 600,000 lives were lost. So profound was the loss that national cemeteries were founded just to house the remains of dead soldiers. The most famous consecration of such a place of honor, took place on November 19, 1863 in the town of Gettysburg, PA, four months after the battle that took place outside of town that claimed about 51,000 lives on both sides.

Monument to General John A. Logan, Grant Park, Chicago

The idea of setting aside an official national Decoration Day to honor the Civil War dead, came after the war and was initiated by John A. Logan, a Union Civil War general and Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. The first observance of Decoration Day in the United States was May 30, 1868. The date was chosen because it was not an anniversary of any significant battle of the war and because it was an ideal day for flowers to be in bloom.

Gradually, Decoration Day began to be observed on May 30th on a state by state basis in the north, while each southern state had its own day of remembrance for the Confederate dead, which many still observe to this day. It wasn't until World War I, where the day would become a remembrance for the fallen soldiers of all wars, not just the Civil War. The term "Memorial Day" was coined in the 1880s but never took hold until the 1970s, when the holiday was officially recognized in all fifty states.

Memorial Day has become a patriotic day of parades, picnics, and a celebration as the first official day of summer. Critics say much of the significance of the day has been lost since observation of the holiday was moved from May 30, to the last Monday of May, creating a three day weekend for most working people. Perhaps this is true. But I see no harm in celebrating this day. After all, we as a nation owe a great deal of debt to the men and women of the armed services who have fought and sometimes died in order to keep us free. Now that, is something to celebrate.

We owe it to them to remember them, but more importantly to remember that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Wrapping ourselves in the flag or making empty patriotic gestures on this or any other day means nothing. We must keep in mind that threats to the values of this nation not only come from abroad, but from within. Our own hubris, greed, sloth, hatred of those not like ourselves, self-serving attitudes, unrelenting lust for power, and perhaps most importantly, our lack of concern for the lives of other people, are as much a threat to our democratic principles, as threats from any outside power. We owe it to our servicemen and women, especially those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, to take part in our democracy, to vote, and when we see fit, to use our voices against oppression, injustice, and intolerance, and most of all, to care about our nation and our world. If we fail, then their sacrifice will have been in vain.

On this Memorial Day, I give thanks to all of you who have devoted yourself in service to this country. Your sacrifice and devotion will never be forgotten. And to all I wish you without reservation, a happy Memorial Day.