WASHINGTON, D.C. July 6 (DPI) – A 73-year-old writer who descends from Thomas Jefferson penned an op-ed in The New York Times calling for the demolition of the Jefferson Memorial because his great-great-great-great-great grandfather, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, was a slaveholder.
Lucian Truscott IV, a West Point graduate with a lifelong rebellious streak, declared in his op-ed that “Monticello is shrine enough for a man who wrote that ‘all men are created equal’ and yet never did much to make those words come true.”
It was another screed from a newspaper that, after the firing of op-ed editor James Bennett last month, is full-stop behind of The Revolution of 2020.
But readers who got their comments approved by NYT moderators pushed back – virtually all of the most popular comments took exception with the idea that we should be engaging in a cultural cleansing because some people today have a problem with history.
The most popular comments, in order:
As an African-American man of 71 years, and having lived in apartheid Virginia until I left for College in 1967, I want the complete history told. The Jefferson Memorial is lacking in truth, but must not be taken down. It must be amended (just as Monticello was newly envisioned) to include Jefferson’s quotes from his “Notes on the State of Virginia” that set forth in shocking detail his views on those persons of African descent that he enslaved and whom he regarded as less than human. There is a section etched in stone at the Memorial about God’s retribution. It fails to mention that God’s judgment would be for the sin of slavery. Make the Memorial more powerful with his ugly truths. We, and future generations will then regard Mr. Jefferson as truly the complex and flawed genius that he was. That is the lesson the world must learn.
No, still not buying it. Jefferson made it immortal: ‘all men an endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…’ However imperfect the founders were, they said it first, it was unique, and it has echoed and will echo down the centuries as our highest ideal. Give them that, even though they were imperfect.
I do not buy this argument. I don’t have any issue with removing the statues of those who seceded from the Union to fight for slavery. Jefferson was different; he was a president of the United States who helped create the Union that men like Lee strove to destroy. So Truscott is a descendant? So what? I have several friends who are also Jefferson descendants who probably would disagree with the writer, but I don’t think their opinions matter on this issue either. Like it or not, Jefferson is one of the most important of the founders of this nation; the memorial is a beautiful work and a lovely place to visit. You want a memorial to Harriet Tubman? Raise the money for it, design it, and build it, and millions will visit it too. You don’t have to destroy an existing thing of beauty in order for another to come into existence.
This is going too far. I admire Truscott– he got the Hemingses into the family graveyard, over white Southern family objection, and he did superb coverage of the Stonewall uprising– but Jefferson’s ideas are so central to the American experience, and so much in peril in the regime of Trump, that all reminders of them are essential. And his possession of slaves is such common knowledge now that anyone looking at the monument will be as aware of that as of the great language: it’s part of Jefferson’s public image.
Having immigrated to this country in more recent years, well after Jim Crowe, I do not feel I have the right to comment about this issue. However in India we removed many statues of the likes of Lord Clive and Curzon and renamed hospitals and buildings after Mahatma Gandhi. It has not provided any meaningful difference. Personally each time I have been to DC I visited the Jefferson Memorial, perhaps 6 times. I certainly would visit the site with your proposed change but perhaps once. I visited Frederick Douglas home twice and it was fascinating – the second time because I thought it was cool to see Lincoln’s own walking stick. Memorials have different importance for Americans who have immigrated at different times. Statues are about public people and not perfect people.