Confederate monument symbolizes pain of segregation. It belongs at Gamble Museum as history.

History needs to be acknowledged, and understood, not ignored or rewritten.

In Manatee County, the statue honoring the Confederate soldiers was placed in front of the courthouse in 1924, long after the Civil War ended. By this time, any veterans of the Civil War would have been quite elderly. It makes sense that the people at that time wanted to acknowledge the sacrifices these men had made to defend their homes while some veterans still lived.

Society in Manatee was segregated and Jim Crow rules applied as they did in every small Southern town. Perhaps by erecting such a statue in 1924, the townspeople were claiming a type of victory in defeat. The South had been vanquished, but the social mores suppressing African-Americans were cemented in place.

Fortunately, the Gamble Mansion is a local Civil War-era museum. It is only appropriate that this statue finds a new home there where it can take its place as an historical monument.

Perhaps the motivation for the statue was not anything more than memorializing the sacrifice of the sons of Manatee. In 2017, it doesn’t matter. When symbols of our history are hijacked by hate groups, when we feel pain when we see reminders of a segregated past adorning civic spaces, we need to act.

Relocating the memorial will not rewrite or ignore our history. Moving it will eliminate it as an affront to everyone in a democratic society striving for equality under the law, and prevent it from being usurped as a symbol of hate.

This story was originally published August 19, 2017 at 1:19 PM with the headline "Confederate monument symbolizes pain of segregation. It belongs at Gamble Museum as history.."