Email from Robert G. Donnelly, Jr. sent Oct. 19, 2020

Dear Judge Imes and members of the Fiscal Court,

I write to you concerning the status of recent deliberations about the Calloway County Confederate Monument (hereafter 'Murray Monument' or simply 'Monument') and, specifically, the apparent omission in these deliberations of a detail that has, it seems, crucial bearing on the eventual disposition of the Monument. I am a mathematics faculty member at Murray State University and a 23-year resident of Murray. I was born in Bowling Green and my parents reside there, and all of my family roots are in South-Central and West Kentucky. The attached letter, sent by me in May 2019 and addressed to MSU's Faculty Senate, offers more about my personal interest in this issue.

On July 15, 2020, the Calloway County Fiscal Court unanimously passed a resolution (RES-20-0715-C) to keep the Monument in place on the old courthouse grounds. The resolution concludes: "The Fiscal Court of Calloway County hereby resolves that the Confederate Monument dedicated to the remembrance of those Calloway Countians who fought in the Civil War shall remain standing upon the Northeast corner of the grounds of the Calloway County Courthouse for so long as the owners of that Monument and the citizens of Calloway County are so inclined." A key justification of the resolution was stated within its text as follows:

"Whereas, inscribed upon the Monument are the words 'In Loving Remembrance' and 'Confederate Soldiers', dearly indicating that the Monument's dedicated purpose was to honor those Calloway Countians who had fought, and many of whom had died, for the Confederacy during America's Civil War" …

"Whereas, this Court believes that this Monument was erected for the purpose of honoring and memorializing the vast majority of Calloway Countians who fought in the Civil War, as evidenced by the words prominently inscribed thereon, rather than, as several have argued, for the purpose of promoting continued oppression" . . .

However, the inscription of the initials "CSA.' on the statue's pedestal seems not to have been a consideration in the Fiscal Court's literalist rendering of the Monument's message. Indeed, these scripted letters offer to the Monument viewer a genial reference, and perhaps even an homage, to a historical-political and national entity — the Confederate States of America — whose core principles, as articulated by its proponents upon its founding and sustained for the duration of its four-year existence, were grossly racist. For example, CSA Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens declared in his infamous "cornerstone" speech that "Our new government is founded . . . upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man". Also, the CSAs Constitution made immutable "the right of property in negro slaves", an explicitly race-centric provision rooted in the racist principle of "the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race," as averred (for example) in Georgia's secession declaration.

The Fiscal Court's omission of any statement concerning how the "CSA.” inscription might affect the understood purpose and meaning of the Monument is not only glaring but also contrary to the egalitarian posture taken by the Court in its July 15 resolution.

Aspects of the larger regional and national discourse on such issues of interpretation might help clarify why this particular inscription is so problematic. The symbolic messages carried by Confederate monuments and other memorials (naming of schools, highways, and military bases; brandishing the Confederate battle flag; etc) have been and will continue to be subjects of debate across our nation. To some, the Confederate battle flag simply represents the colors carried by their forebears into the horrors of war, while to others it is a symbol of a dishonorable and racist cause, namely the right to own slaves. In a similar way, the likeness of Robert E. Lee upon many memorials, including the Murray Monument, is seen by some as an offensive veneration of a man who was a cruel slave-owner and traitor to his country and by others as an invocation of honorable and dutiful service to one's homeland. A broad consensus understanding of these symbols is far from being realized, although there seems to be an invariable, and in my view altogether appropriate, trend towards a general disapprobation of Confederate symbols.

Members of the Fiscal Court rightly spoke to the complex nature of such symbols during their July 15, 2020 deliberations. In the spirit of those remarks, what follows is a possible assessment of the main particulars of the Murray Monument. We could note that Robert E. Lee was indeed a slave-owner and was stripped of his citizenship after the War, but he had a distinguished military career prior to the War and a post-war life that many (controversially) view as reconciliatory. Given this totality, his use as a memorial symbol is complicated. In a similar way, references to and images of the generic Confederate soldier, as appear on the Murray Monument and on monuments across the South, can be seen to represent, at least in part, those rank-and-file persons from non-slave-owning families within the Confederate region who enjoined the fight on the Confederate side not out of malice but out of a sense of duty or, perhaps, even resignation, although, of course, the ultimate cause of their fight was malign. That is to say, the generic Confederate soldier, held up as a memorial symbol, does not yield completely to singular interpretations such as unadulterated virtue or unregenerate racism; it is complicated.

The CSA is not thusly complicated. While the terms "Confederate" and "Confederacy" have meaning as generic referents to a region or to combatants or to a politics, the CSA was, and always will be, a specific historical-political and national entity. Its existence is constrained to a short and definite period of time (1861-1865). The CSA claimed status as a nation separate from the United States of America. And its founding principles, which were avowedly racist, are not in doubt and were never revoked. The racism some reasonably find inherent in the founding of the USA is different in the following vitally important senses: The USA has demonstrably worked to overcome the terrible legacy of slavery (and of systemic "apartheid" racism in the century after the Civil War), and indeed its founding documents articulated principles and mechanisms that made such reforms possible. All Americans can take pride in these accomplishments and can respect those who pursue, within our Constitutional framework, further such reforms.

It is conspicuous and noteworthy that the inscription of the initials of another nation - "CSA" - on the Murray Monument has (it seems) not been featured in recent local discussions, particularly in formal proceedings or in the press. Perhaps this is because the inscribed initials seem to blend into the Monument as mere decoration, or because in many images of the Monument the letters are not visible. I certainly overlooked them for many, many years. Moreover, these letters might carry no specific meaning even for viewers who happen to notice them. "CSA' stands for many things now, such as Community Supported Agriculture, so these letters might be ignored as having some arcane historical meaning (the initials of the sculptor? a Calloway service association?).  However, our collective ignorance of their meaning - "Confederate States of America" - does not erase them or sanitize them or obviate our responsibility to address them in our discourses.

We should all agree that people have the right to recognize the honorable service of their ancestors, and so the existence of a memorial to soldiers is not, on its face, objectionable. Indeed, this seems to be the position of the Fiscal Court concerning the Murray Monument. But such monuments of remembrance, especially when displayed on public grounds with the imprimatur of the government (national, state, or local), should not explicitly and textually endorse historical-political entities, and especially other nations, whose core principles are inarguably racist. And, yet, the Murray Monument, with its flourishing invocations of the CSA, does exactly this.

In view of this (apparently) overlooked information, and in concert with requests from Sherman Neal II and many other Calloway Countians, I implore the Fiscal Court to rescind RES-20-0715-C altogether and affirm a commitment to relocate this problematic Monument away from public grounds.

Thank you for your time,

Robert G. Donnelly, Jr.

Editor's note: The memo attached to Donnelly's email is provided below.

To: Faculty Senate

From: Rob Donnelly (former at-large Faculty Senator)

Re: Memorials

Date: May 7, 2019

We're all likely familiar with the well-publicized and distressing conflicts in Charlottesville (home of the University of Virginia) over the possible removal of Confederate memorials. Some of us might be less familiar with a similar conflict on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I've paid close attention to both conflicts, as I grew up in Virginia and did all of my graduate work at UNC-CH.

I spent six years on the UNC campus, and, like most students (but certainly not all), I was largely unaware of UNC's Confederate memorial — a statue-on-a-pedestal known as "Silent Sam" — even though it occupied a privileged position in one of the most historic and beautiful quadrangles on campus. In recent months I've been reminded of this memorial, as protestors exercising their free-speech rights have at last been able to focus the UNC community's attention on some painful aspects of the history of the Silent Sam monument. Some of those protestors (controversially) felled the Silent Sam statue in August 2018, and authorities subsequently removed it to an undisclosed location. In January 2019, the UNC Chancellor (controversially) ordered the removal of the statue's remaining pedestal, which was emblazoned with text and images that, it seems fair to say, offered an overt statement of veneration for the cause of the Confederacy.

The conflicts about the memorials in Charlottesville and in Chapel Hill are ongoing, and it is clear that their citizens are divided as to the best response. Perhaps the memorials should be removed from public view altogether? Or perhaps they should be removed to a museum or other location where the memorials can be visited by the public but where further clarification about the historical nature of the Confederacy and Confederate memorials is also provided? Or perhaps they should stay in place but have their context expanded by the nearby placement of new memorials dedicated to slaves and their descendants, to abolitionists, and/or to Union soldiers and their leaders? Or perhaps nothing should be done at all?

Of course, those two cities and their esteemed universities are far to our east, across foothills and mountains and onto the Piedmont, and — unlike our region — situated centrally within some of the most contested territory of the Civil War. Even so, it is difficult to contemplate the conflicts there and not reflect, at least a little, upon our own circumstances here in West Kentucky. In particular, I'm thinking of one of the most notable landmarks of the City of Murray, the Confederate Monument placed on the courthouse square in 1917, at the crossroads of Kentucky highways 94 and 121, under the auspices of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

I've long been confused by the singular statement this memorial seems to make, which, evidently, is that our town is proud of its heritage of support for the Confederacy. And yet, the citizens of our Commonwealth were famously divided in their sympathies for the opposing causes of the Union and the Confederacy, and indeed Kentucky remained loyal to the Union for the duration of the war. Moreover, many from this part of the country volunteered to fight for the Union — for example, of the roughly 1000 Calloway County citizens who joined to fight in the Civil War, about 200 fought for the Union. Some 1500 slaves were held in bondage in Calloway County at the outset of the war; emancipation of those slaves who survived the war was not secured until after the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and the deaths of 750,000 soldiers. Shouldn't some of these latter facts also be prominently memorialized in Murray?

My beloved grandmother Mary Emily Hancock Wilson (1914-2015) was born and raised in Mayfield and had many relatives in the surrounding areas. One of her ancestors, whom she never knew, was a slave-holder near Hopkinsville and fought for the Confederacy during the war. Her father's father, whom she knew very well, abhorred slavery and therefore left Mayfield to join the Union ranks; he marched with Sherman, was discharged in Chapel Hill NC at the end of the war, and died in 1928. (She and her brother Hunter Hancock were early and active members of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society.) This part of my family's history is surely not unique, as many people from the Purchase area of Kentucky are likely descended both from proponents and opponents of the Union and Confederate causes. This complex history belies the singular prominence of the Confederate memorial ensconced on our courthouse square.

Even though the Confederate Monument in Murray is not part of our campus, our university is explicitly and publicly linked to it, as the university shares the name of our city and because, due to the relatively new payroll taxes levied on all MSU faculty, our faculty now have a much larger stake than ever in procuring revenue for the City of Murray, upon whose grounds this memorial resides. Given the moments of historical reconsideration that are happening not just in Virgin and North Carolina but in other places in our nation, perhaps this is an opportune time (6-28-20: I did not realize at the time that the monument is on County, not City, grounds) our faculty to help begin such a process of reconsideration here in our community.

So, I ask that the Faculty Senate consider initiating dialogue with the Murray City Council and other local constituencies (historical societies, advocacy groups, etc) to begin a constructive process of reconsideration of our city's most conspicuous, and incongruous, memorial.

Regards,

Rob Donnelly

The foregoing is part of a collection of correspondence to various Calloway County government officials as well as remarks made before the Calloway County Fiscal Court in 2020, which the Sentinel obtained from County Judge-Executive Kenny Imes' office.