The Long History of Damnatio Memoriae and the Destruction of Monuments

After video emerged Monday of protesters toppling and kicking the Confederate Soldiers Monument in Durham, North Carolina, some suggested that such statutes should remain standing because they’re part of our history and heritage. Yet the monuments were mostly erected decades after the fall of the Confederacy and made of flimsy materials, bought from factories that specialized in budget-friendly “racist kitsch.” The United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to reify the myth of the Lost Cause by funding the Durham monument and others like it—precisely because people who lived through the Confederacy were forgetting it or dying.