<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The long debate over what to do with UT\u2019s Confederate statues seems to have finally come to an end — mostly. But as UT is finding, once the statues come down, the story isn\u2019t over. Instead, there\u2019s a whole new set of questions: what should be done with those statues? Where do they belong, how do we make sense of their value, and what can they tell us about the past? And, what should happen with the spaces where they used to stand?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ll be exploring those questions on this episode of Death and Numbers. <\/em>The answers will take us deep into UT\u2019s archives, and out onto a walking tour of the campus, as we meet some of the people invested in the afterlife of UT\u2019s confederate statues. This episode is hosted by Caroline Pinkston. Caroline Pinkston is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work brings education into conversation with childhood studies and cultural memory. She holds a B.A. in American Studies and English from Northwestern University (2008), an M.S. in English Education from Lehman College (2010), and an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Texas (2014). A former high school English teacher, she has taught and worked in public, private, and nonprofit settings in New York City and Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Caroline Pinkston","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"caroline-pinkston","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-25 17:31:53","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-25 17:31:53","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/death-and-numbers\/?post_type=speaker&p=584","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":"","transcript":" It’s a perfect Monday in early October at the University of Texas in the South Mall on campus
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The long debate over what to do with UT\u2019s Confederate statues seems to have finally come to an end — mostly. But as UT is finding, once the statues come down, the story isn\u2019t over. Instead, there\u2019s a whole new set of questions: what should be done with those statues? Where do they belong, how […]","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/death-and-numbers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2018\/11\/Death-and-Numbers-Confederate-Statues-Caroline-Pinkston.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"36.52M","filesize_raw":"38296928","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[94,95,90,30,96,91,93,92],"categories":[],"series":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-59","1":"podcast","2":"type-podcast","3":"status-publish","5":"tag-austin","6":"tag-confederacy","7":"tag-confederate","8":"tag-history","9":"tag-legacy","10":"tag-statues","11":"tag-tour","12":"tag-ut","13":"series-death-and-numbers","14":"entry"},"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":584,"post_author":"40","post_date":"2020-06-25 17:31:53","post_date_gmt":"2020-06-25 17:31:53","post_content":"\n
\nis a beautiful place to be. A vast green lawns slopes down from the U.T. tower
\n\ue5d4
\nlined by giant oak trees that frame a view of the state capital and downtown Austin.
\nA statue of George Washington stands at the top of the green, and at the bottom of the hill, an elaborate fountain
\nmarks the southern boundary of the mall. Students are hustling between classes in what they call
\nthe six pack. The half dozen buildings that line the green three on each side. And the
\nlawn is full of people talking, studying. We’re just lying on the grass, enjoying the day.
\nOn a day like today, it’s easy to forget that until quite recently, the South Mall was home to a
\ncontroversial piece of U.T. history. But this little patch of ground has played an important role
\nin a major conversation taking place at U.T. and around the country about Confederate memorials.
\nThat’s because of the statues that stood here until August of 2017. There
\nwere six statues of men and mostly Confederate veterans. Those statues
\nhad been controversial pretty much since they were first commissioned in 1916. But in recent years,
\nthey became the focus of especially intense organized protest. In 2015,
\na racist mass shooting took place in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. In the aftermath
\nof that event, the University of Texas took steps towards dismantling its Confederate memorials.
\nTwo of the statues were removed. And two years later, after white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville,
\nthe university removed the remaining statues. Today, just George Washington and the Littlefield
\nfountain remain the only evidence that anything else was ever. Here are the pedestals that
\nused to support the statues. They are now covered in plastic, awaiting whatever comes next
\nfor them. So the long debate over what to do with Utah’s Confederate statues
\nseems to have finally come to an end mostly. But as U.T. is finding,
\nonce the statues come down, the story isn’t over. Instead, there’s a whole new set of questions.
\nWhat should be done with those statues? Where do they belong? How do we make sense of their value? And what can they tell
\nus about the past? And what should happen with the spaces where they used to stand?
\nWe’ll be exploring those questions on this episode of Death and Nos, a podcast created by the Humanities
\nMedia Project and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The answers
\nwill take us Deep and Duty’s archives and out onto a walking tour of the campus as we meet
\nsome of the people invested in the afterlife of Utah’s Confederate statues. I’m Caroline
\nPinkston.
\nThe options the options seem to be that you can leave them in place, that you can
\nleave in a place that Plax you can remove them
\nand put them in and we see him setting. Well, you can remove him and just preserve them.
\nThat’s been right. The associate director for communication at UTSA, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.
\nThe Briscoe Center is a renowned archive and research center that houses millions of documents, records,
\nmanuscripts, photographs, all kinds of objects. It’s been a treasure trove for researchers for many
\nyears. But since August of 2015, the Briscoe Center has been tasked with doing something that
\nis still relatively uncharted territory, providing an appropriate home to the Confederate statues
\nremoved from the South Mall. We ask yourself what what sort of questions we want the exhibits
\nanswer. And they were why is the statue here? Why
\nwas it built a UTI in the first place and what changed in between? And those salaciousness
\nthree questions are concerned as the answers to those questions start with a man named George Littlefield
\nand the early 20th century. Littlefield was on UTSA board of Regents and was one of the university’s most
\nimportant benefactors. He was also a Confederate veteran who had already been involved in creating
\nConfederate memorials at the Texas Capital Building in 1916. Littlefield commissioned
\na sculptor named Pompeo kopb to create a massive bronze arch at the entrance to the South Mall.
\nThe arch would feature a statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, surrounded by four other
\nmen, Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston. Both leaders in the Confederate Army,
\nJohn H. Reagan, the postmaster general of the Confederacy. And James Stephen Hogg, the
\nmany times. Eventually, the whole idea of an arch was replaced with a plan to arrange the statues
\naround a fountain, and importantly, a statue of Woodrow Wilson was added to the mix.
\nWilson’s addition might seem strange and a memorial to Confederates, but the change signals the way Littlefield’s
\noriginal plan was reimagined as a sort of hybrid memorial to both the Civil
\nWar and World War One. As he ultimately designed it, the fountain and
\nthe statues would symbolize the reconciling of differences between North and South through the shared
\nexperience of the First World War. But that reconciliatory theme never
\nreplaced the underlying message of Confederate glory. An inscription to the west of the fountain
\nmade that clear. It dedicated the memorial quote to the men and women of the Confederacy
\nwho fought with valor and suffered with fortitude. That state’s rights be maintained and who
\nnot dismayed by defeat nor discouraged by Miss Rule builded from the ruins of the devastating
\nwar. A greater south. Littlefield never saw the statues built.
\nHe died in 1920. The plans for the SML memorial went forward without him.
\nAccording to the instructions, Lufton as well. But it wasn’t installed until 1933,
\nand in the end it looked quite different than what Littlefield had originally envisioned or kopb for that matter.
\nThe Littlefield fountain at the far end of the South Mall featured Columbia, the goddess of liberty,
\nsailing out across the waters of Europe to World War One, accompanied by the U.S. Army and Navy
\nat the far north end of the mall. Twin statues of Jefferson Davis and Woodrow Wilson flanked the steps
\nto the U.T. Tower. The four remaining statues of Lee Johnston, Reagan and Haug
\nwere arranged along the South Mall. Once the statues were separated like this,
\nit was easy to forget that they were all originally part of one work. And over the next 80 years,
\nit was increasingly easy to forget about them altogether. But not everyone forgot.
\nVarious groups have demanded the removal of some or all of the statues many times, especially since
\nthe 1990s, with varying levels of support and intensity. There have been hunger strikes,
\nepisodes of vandalism, petitions, letters to the editor and town hall meetings. And in response,
\nthe university has convened committees, endlessly debated whether to keep or remove the statues or
\nadd explanatory plaques and added other statues around campus. Civil rights icons to balance
\nor dilute the effect of the Confederates. But through all that, the Confederates stayed.
\nThat changed in 2015, in May of that year. A new student government was elected
\non a platform that called for the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue. That campaign was already
\nunderway when a white supremacist murdered nine African-Americans in a church in Charleston.
\nThe massacre brought a new level of urgency to a national conversation about Confederate symbols,
\nand the effects were felt at U.T., too. Within a week of the shooting, the Confederate statues on Utah’s campus
\nwere spray painted with the words Black Lives Matter. A petition that circulated to remove
\nthe statues gathered signatures quickly, and a task force was formed by U.T. President Greg
\nFANFARES to study the issue. Over the summer of 2015. In August,
\nthe task force put forward a series of recommendations to President fanbois stating clearly that,
\nquote, doing nothing was not a viable option. Finally, Fed was announced that
\ntwo statues would be removed. Jefferson Davis and Woodrow Wilson Davis would go because
\nof his Confederate ties. Wilson, on the other hand, would be removed for the purposes of cemetery.
\nSince the two statues flanked the steps leading to the tower, the Wilson statue alone was
\nnot especially controversial, so it could be relocated to another part of campus. Davis,
\nhowever, was to be rehoused in a space that could appropriately contextualize the statue
\nin an educational setting. That space was the Briscoe Center. I think as soon as the
\nstudent movement to have the statues remove gained the serious momentum
\nit needed after the Charleston shooting that we started
\nalmost timidly having conversations about how, you know, we
\nhad the capabilities to to house the statues and
\nto provide an educational setting for them rather than a commemorative setting. The idea that Confederate
\nstatues belong somewhere where they can be appropriately contextualized has been a common refrain in
\nother communities across the country. But U.T. is one of the first places to really do it
\nand has been right, points out. That’s partly because the archival holdings at the Briscoe Center make it easy
\nto tell the story in a level of detail that you can’t easily get in other places. For example,
\nwe’ve got the papers of competing commissioned the statue who have sculpted the statue
\npapers of Littlefield, who commissioned the papers of the university where it’s housed. That means we’ve got the faculty
\nbuilding committee minutes talked about the location and just the general
\nlayout of campus. We’ve got other records here. We work with the Alexander Architecture Archive
\nto get some of Paul crays original renderings of the redesign of
\nthe statue of F that monument, things like that. So. So
\nit was pretty quick to identify the various archival collections we would
\nuse to to enhance the educational
\nexhibit, because what we could have done is put the statue up, put a description
\nnext to it about why it’s here and and
\nleft it at that. And naturally, some Confederate monuments will probably have to look like that.
\nAnd we same sentence because they may not have the same sort of archival resources that we do to tell
\nthe story. Wright and his team spent over a year digging through the available archival holdings.
\nUltimately, they arrived at an exhibit that was divided into six sections which chronicled the life
\nof the statue. These sections correspond to display cases which were laid out in a row
\nin the Briscoe Center’s exhibit hall. Each full of letters and photographs and invoices and meeting
\nnotes you’ve got. You know, we’ve got letters, typewritten,
\nhandwritten letters. We’ve got newspapers, photographs, material
\nculture items, i.e. the statue. And then and. Yes.
\nAnd we’ve also got tweets and Facebook posts and
\nvideo content from the task force forums.
\nSo, yeah, yeah, we’ve got invoices from Prom’s Works,
\nreally uses a very sort of just diverse range of factual
\narchival matter, if you like. Altogether, these documents shed light on the networks of people
\nand logistics and materials and money that exist behind the construction or ultimately the removal
\nof a statue like this one. But it was the statue itself that really determined the layout of the exhibit.
\nWe always knew that because of the weight of the statue, we knew that it
\nwas going to be housed where it was announced that it would face
\noutwards and that it would therefore be in the exhibit
\nhall rather than the exhibit gallery, which is a 14
\nfoot wide corridor. So it’s quite a wide corridor, but nevertheless, it meant we were always going to have a
\ntall and skinny exhibit rather than a squatter or such
\nan exhibit. That matters because the shape of the exhibit determines the way visitors can move
\nthrough the space in a circular hall. Visitors might move from one display to the next at well,
\nkind of taking in the story in pieces or skipping parts altogether. Here, visitors
\ncan still do what they want. As Ben Wright told me, there’s no test at the end so you can skip if you want to.
\nBut the narrow hallway encourages you to walk from one section to the next to read the story in order.
\nAnd you can’t get to the statue without walking through the historical context first. It’s
\na layered story, but a linear one, and it all leads up to the statue at the end.
\nThe statue is huge. You can really tell how big it is in the space of a hallway. The open
\narea of the South Mall made it seem smaller somehow, but here it towers over you.
\nAnd that’s fitting because maybe the most important decision that Wright and his team made was to focus this
\nexhibit on the statue itself. It is an exhibit about an
\nactual object, the history of an actual object. Well, I should say history of an object that is now
\nan object. It’s been downgraded culturally, essentially from the object of commemoration
\nto just just a piece of material culture. In a very significant
\npiece of that, making the exhibit about the statue might seem like an obvious choice, but it’s actually
\none of the central questions at play in the afterlife of these objects. When U.T. says it wants to place
\nthe statues in their appropriate educational context, which context is the right one
\nis the point to tell the story of the statues themselves, who built them and when and why,
\nor to tell the story of the men who are memorialized here? Who is Jefferson Davis, for example? And
\nwhy is he controversial today? Or should we really be telling the story of white supremacy?
\nWhat these statues represented in terms of race relations to the men who built them and the students who walked by them
\nevery day? Of course, these strands are deeply intertwined. But if you’re
\ntrying to turn a Confederate statue into an object with educational value, you have to grapple
\nwith which of these strands to focus on or how best to show their relationship. There were people who would
\nhave preferred a more,
\nI guess, Miss Mr. More thematic exhibit where we just looked at the various issues around Confederate
\nstatue and spoke to those rather than a chronological
\nexhibit. And part I think part of the
\ndefense as to why we made that choice is that it is quite a powerful
\nstory on its own. That is
\nmore sort of interesting than we guess. We were surprised
\nat how interesting these statues are not there. They’re not just
\ninteresting because they’re controversial. They’re actually quite interesting as objects that were made
\nand disputed and argued about and paid for and moved.
\nSo. But then the other side of it is
\ntelling that story actually creates these platforms, multiple platforms
\nto have discussions about the more immediate,
\nvitriolic and controversial aspects of it. For example, people
\nyou know, there’s this idea of the myth of permanency that statues convey that
\nsome of the evidence we have on display refutes that. This flat out refutes and
\nin not a provocative way, but in a very assertive matter of fact way. And it’s the same with
\nmobility. The idea the statues have always been in more places. They they haven’t they’ve they move to actually
\nquite easily moved for. Right. Thinking closely about the statues as material objects
\nand digging through the archive isn’t a way of dodging the larger issues that the statues represent.
\nIt’s a way into to thinking about those issues. The archival evidence, the physical evidence
\nof the statues themselves. Right. Talk to me about the process of cleaning 80 years of pigeon poop off
\nof Jefferson Davis. All of that adds complexity and depth to this story.
\nBut of course, zooming in so closely does mean other things are comparatively hidden from view.
\nFor one thing, there’s the other statues. In August or 2017, after the white supremacist rallies
\nin Charlottesville, the university removed the rest of the statues from Littlefield’s commission overnight.
\nBut only Davis is on display at the Briscoe Center. The rest, for now at least, are in storage.
\nAnd the full exhibit that Wright and his team worked on was only designed to stay up through Christmas of 2017.
\nNow it’s collapsed into a smaller exhibit with a digital component. Although Davis will remain on display,
\nmaybe the larger issue, though, is getting people to engage with the story that the Briscoe Center has unearthed.
\nEven when the exhibit was up and its expanded form, it was hardly crowded. I think those who
\nkeep up with the issues and intended to see probably have by now and
\npeople still stop and look at it on the way to the reading room and
\nclasses still come to visit. We have. And so,
\nI mean, you can see how many people were out there. Now, it’s not into this. It’s not Franklin’s
\nbarbecue. But. But no, I think and and
\nmy prediction is that the issue will resurface and
\nthe interest in UTSA handling of the situation will
\npeak again and the interest in the briskness in his exhibit peak. That’s not out of keeping
\nwith the history of Utah’s Confederate statues, actually. They’ve been lightning rods for controversy
\nand there have been periods of time when they were very much in the spotlight. But they’ve also spent plenty of time
\nbeing overlooked, too, by students who didn’t know who they represented. Or maybe you just didn’t notice
\nthem at all. You know, that’s one of the interesting things about photographs of the statue we have.
\nThey usually have someone leaning against them, studying or, you know,
\nwe weren’t able to find photographs of students really looking at them and thinking hard about historical issues.
\nThey knew they were they were. And the evidence suggests they were mostly ignored
\nby students.
\nDr. Edmund Gordon knows very well how easy it is for students to walk around the U.T. campus without
\nreally being aware of the history of their surroundings. He’s spent the last 20 years working to change
\nthat. Most people don’t really have
\na really good grasp of the history of U.S. or Texas history either. So, for
\nexample, from the students to the adults I take on the tour, a
\nlot of them don’t know, you know, why we’ve got a street, a dorm named San Jacinto.
\nSo that’s basic Texas history. People don’t know or they’ve heard
\nof it or. Oh, get to the places where we’ll talk about,
\nwell, the Confederate flag flies what used to fly up until three weeks ago
\non campus. They can’t recognize it because it’s not what you used
\nto. Some people, you know, they don’t. Part of their
\nIT ability to read things is they don’t have enough of the references necessary to be able to do so.
\nSo that’s that’s part of why this is about pedagogy, is to give people the references
\nnecessary to understand and give meaning to what it is they’re seeing or experience or passing.
\nDr. Gordon is the chair of the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at U.T. since
\nthe 1990s. He’s been on the frontlines of the struggle surrounding Confederate monuments and memorials at U.T.
\nand around Austin. He’s been named to just about every task force or working group U.T. has ever
\nhad about statues or buildings named after Confederates. He’s also a member of the Austin Independent
\nSchool Board, where he’s been leading the charge to rename Austin schools that are named after Confederates.
\nBut for Dr. Gordon, it’s never been just about the statues or the names. It’s been about broader
\nissues of equity and inclusion and justice at U.T. And he’s fought to keep those broader issues
\nat the center of the conversation. Because of that, it wasn’t Dr. Gordon’s first choice to take the
\nstatues down. Instead, he would have liked to see them used to start conversations about
\nUtah’s history. Now, my chick of my involvement in these conversations about the statues,
\nI always try to she well, within the context of the
\nissues of the racial politics of the university and gender politics, for that matter.
\nAnd so my and my recommendation to
\nthe group in 2015, to Simkins Group when they were that was to the Powers
\nCommittee before that about the statues, was basically a recommendation
\nthat the statues remain in place and that they be both contextualizes
\ndraw. This was being university. And this is there’s an issue of pedagogy here
\nthat may be worn as this as a scarlet letter by the university, as
\na means of talking about the past and what the
\nracial passing the university was, as a means of the university
\naccepting responsibility for that racial past. And then they’d
\nbe used as the basis for the university taking some real steps in terms of diversifying
\nor creating more equity on the campus. Part of Dr. Gordon’s concern about removing the statues
\ncomes from what he’s seen happen at the university in the past. In 2010, for example,
\nDr. Gordon was part of a committee that worked to rename Simkins Hall a dorm named after a former U.T.
\nlaw professor who was a grand dragon of the KKK. The dorm is now named Creekside.
\nAnd today, Dr. Gordon says his students have no idea that the dorm ever had a previous name.
\nAnd that’s because we decided as a university that when we were challenging
\nthe existence of a dorm named after Simkins that what would we do? Would not would not contextualised
\nor tell the story or leave the story there or try to talk about how it is
\nthat this is our past. But this is our present in relation to we just say to
\nin part, this is because of the reasons why do we decide which is named Creekside, who is now
\nCreekside? So that tells no story at all. Just by the creek. Right. Right.
\nAnd that’s to be a problem. It’s a problem because Dr. Gordon believes that changing a name or removing
\na statue doesn’t change history. History still leaves traces on structures, the present.
\nAnd if people don’t know that history, it’s harder for them to make sense of the present.
\nAnd that’s why, in addition to his many other responsibilities, Dr. Gordon has spent the last 20
\nyears or so leading a tour around campus for anyone students, faculty members, community
\nmembers, anyone who wants to learn more about what he calls the racial geography of.
\nAt this point, the tour is a
\nit’s forman’s of a particular kind of politics in particular kind of pedagogy based.
\nAnd I do it because of my political commitment to
\nto. All along from the 90s would have.
\nThought about the statues that people need to know. Now, just
\na statue with the main buildings, the landscape. CSEDRIK Serious people
\nneed to be able to to read better what it
\nis that they experience every day. That’s anthropologist’s. So that’s that’s
\na key aspect of interpretation of the everyday. So as you move through
\nan everyday landscape, the landscape that you move through has has meaning
\nhad meaning to folks who construct it and then it has meaning or or not to the fortune through it.
\nSo it’s always been important to interpret that. But then the politics of it is to be
\nable to have people recognize that the university has a particular kind of racial
\nand gender balance to it, and that one can
\nread that through the landscape. And we can read it. But it also demonstrates
\nkind of physically what the origins of the universe are and what the areas that the universe
\nneeds to overcome as it moves forward. Dr. Gordon’s racial geography tour, not surprisingly,
\nincludes the Confederate statues, but it goes beyond them to like Ben Wright and the team
\nat the Briscoe Center. Dr. Gordon wants to help people make sense of those statues, understand them in context.
\nBut the context in this case is the broader landscape of the University of Texas campus. If Ben
\nWright is zooming in. Dr. Gordon is zooming out, tracing patterns in the history
\nand environment of the university that shed light not just on the statues, but on what they symbolize in
\nthis particular space. And if the Briscoe Center exhibit works by structuring the environment
\nin which people encounter the Jefferson Davis statue, Dr. Gordon’s tour works by taking people
\nout so that they can walk around and experience the campus together. If you walk through
\nthe university as a physical space, you can see how it is that racial
\ninequity is sediment into the into the physical
\nspace of the university. Its architecture is landscape. It’s a naming
\nprocedures. And that by seeing that, you can understand how
\nrace structured the physical space. You the prison is built
\non top of that. What’s been that’s been racial sediment and into the physical space.
\nAnd that then should have us wonder how it is or speculate
\nhow it is that the racial past is also cemented in baked in to our
\nsocial, organizational, cultural reality.
\nContemporarily. And then we should be doing the same kinds of archeology as in excavations
\nof that aspect of the university, as the tour does in terms of
\ntrying to understand the physical aspect of the universe. There’s a slideshow version of the information,
\nbut Dr. Gordon prefers to walk and the tour and it’s an abbreviated version can take several hours.
\nDespite the length, it’s in high demand. And Dr. Gordon speculates that he’s been doing it now for 15 or 20
\nyears. One of the first tours you want to talk say that
\nthat I did was I was talking to someone, a case manager,
\nprogram manager from the Rockefeller Foundation, who is here from New York.
\nI’m a New Yorker myself. And you’re talking about, you know, the south and racism
\non campus. And I said, well, you know, the racial
\npassive campus is still very much with us and began to talk about some of the
\nthings that I actually had slides, but I wasn’t showing her side show. So
\nI said, well, let’s walk out and I’ll show you similar things. And so I walked down and showed us some of these things
\nand things sort of progressed from there. And all the time since that
\nfirst tour. Things have changed. Buildings have been renamed. New statues have been built.
\nAnd Dr. Gordon says he’s still learning new things about campus all the time. But the tour format is
\naccommodating. Dr. Gordon is always adjusting, adding on, changing the route. And the tour
\nhas never been about any one building or statue as much as the landscape and context.
\nBecause of that, Dr. Gordon says the SML will remain an important part of his tour, even with
\nthe statue’s gone. So the statues are gone, but there’s still the stubs of the statues and there’s also
\nthis interesting plastic wrapping and black paper in front of it and all that. So
\nthat’s almost as NCAR fact as the statues themselves. And most people,
\nyou know, when you’ve taken by those places, they don’t know who was there, but they didn’t
\nknow who those people were anyway before they had a notion that there were confederates down there. But they didn’t
\nknow Volman Confederate, who was who of what was what. And so it’s not that much different.
\nThis is a it’s a geography tour, but it could be called is easily an archeological one.
\nIt’s about digging through the meanings of the of the physical
\nof material culture. And those things are all part of material culture. And whether they’re there
\nor not, the traces therein and one can, you know, dig through
\nthe meanings of the traces and construct what was there, what they meant, why they were,
\nyou know, why they were put there and also why they were taken down. Dr. Gordon will also be paying close attention
\nto what ends up happening to the places where the statues used to be, if anything. So one of the reasons
\nI now start over here at the Barbara Jordan statue is I am making
\na bigger deal with how it is that
\nthe contemporary notions that the university has of who and what it
\nis are represented also in
\nit have a physical expression also. And that physical expression is installed
\nover the sediments of the past. So they don’t change it. They’re
\nbuilt on it. They’re attempting to change the valence or change
\nthe meaning that’s there. But they’re definitely builds on the path. And so
\nunderstanding, you know, that those statues were taken down and understanding
\nwhy that was done and why some other choices weren’t made is also an interesting
\nkind of the same kind of an interesting indication of what
\nthe contemporary politics of the university, which is that, well, we can’t any
\nlonger have these symbolic of be symbolic of who we are.
\nBut what we’d rather do now is to kind of remove those
\nreferences without necessarily doing anything to put anything more positive
\nin its place. And that’s true both physically and also is true
\nin terms of the kind of social lives tution or aspects of the universe. In
\nother words, no matter what the university does or doesn’t do with the empty pedestals on the SML,
\nthe decision will tell a story. And Dr. Gordon will fold that story into his tour and
\nput it in conversation with the rest of the landscape. It’s an evolving process and a good reminder
\nthat the Confederate statues coming down mark an important moment in Utah’s history, but not an endpoint.
\nAs both Dr. Gordon and Ben Wright. No. Well, the statues are very much still with us, and
\nwe still need now as much as ever to pay attention to what they indicate about our past and our present.
\nThis has been Death in Numbers, a podcast created and produced by the Humanities Media Project and the College
\nof Liberal Arts at U.T. Austin and Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services. I’m
\nCaroline Pinkston. Notes for the show, including links and photos can be found on our website. Humanity’s
\nMedia Project Dawg. Our theme music is enthusiast by torse. Thank you for
\nlistening.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/death-and-numbers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2018\/03\/DeathandNumbers.jpg","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/death-and-numbers\/podcast-download\/59\/the-afterlife-of-confederate-statues.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/death-and-numbers\/podcast-player\/59\/the-afterlife-of-confederate-statues.mp3","audio_player":"