In their own words: Why they joined ‘Ghosts of a Lost Cause’
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MarTeze Hammonds: "As a native of Murray, I wanted people to see a familiar face of color from Murray, who had lived experience with the statue. Some people assume we don’t or didn’t care about it because they didn’t see us march or speak out in the past; however, we did raise our voices. Sometimes you simply get really tired of fighting for and raising awareness for people to not listen or care to change. I remember when I was 7 or 8, we had a Martin Luther King Jr. march that started at Boone’s Laundry, down Main Street, past the statue and turned off on LP Miller to St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church. I remember moving through that space and knowing how significant it was as comments were made about the statute while enroute. One must ask the questions: Just look at the direction the statue faces – toward the Douglass neighborhood. What is the symbolism? What or whose history is being safeguarded by the monument?"
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Constance Alexander: "I was asked to be interviewed for the film because I had written articles in support of removing the statue honoring Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy that has stood on the Calloway County Courthouse grounds for one hundred years. Paying tribute to a movement that sought to preserve slavery and dismantle the union has no place on government property. The monument casts a shadow on the promise of “liberty and justice for all” and the film explores the contradictions of its enduring presence."
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Shelly Baskin: "I decided to participate in the documentary because I wanted to help create a record of the work we did in the community, with the focus being on telling that story in our own words. There's been many projects that I've been involved in that have quickly faded from memory because the only records of what happened are a few scattered local news pieces that just gave dispassionate accounting of the events. I want people, especially our fellow activists in other communities, to hear this story straight from us and know that they're not alone in working towards justice. I hope that other people out there that are struggling towards changing their communities can see this documentary and see a reflection of themselves and their own activism and feel like, even if we're far apart, we're still doing this work together."
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Robyn Pizzo: "I wanted to find a way to make meaning of what we’d been through together as a community, and telling our story through the documentary was a way to do that. We didn’t get the outcome we wanted, but we learned a lot about resistance, purpose, patience, and compassion. That became the fuel to keep going."
“Ghosts of a Lost Cause” chronicles the 2020 effort to relocate the Confederate monument from the grounds of the Calloway County Courthouse and the community conflict that followed.
Several Murray residents featured in the documentary shared with The Murray Sentinel why they chose to participate in the film and what they hoped their stories would preserve.
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