Transforming Robert Lee

[Douglas Mercer]

Douglas Mercer
April 3 2025

Will Harriet Tubman get the nod? Or will it be one of those crusaders for negro rights like Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King? Maybe they will go full afro and criminal and pick one of those fist raising Black Panthers that the Jews were so enamored of in the 1960s. These all have their logic, as would an ensemble of slaves in chains raising their eyes heavenward in order to beseech the Lord for liberation. Who knows, really, but they for sure have something brewing and black artists all across the land are licking their big lips hoping to get their beaks wet and get duked in to the long arc of negro history.

It’s not much of a history but that won’t stop them from ballyhooing it and pretending it is art. Of course they could just be honest and put up a statue of Nat Turner or one of those other slave rebels who tore through the countryside murdering White people. But whatever or whomever they end up choosing they have the symbol of symbols for this one; in an undisclosed location they have the chemical remains of no less an icon that Robert E Lee. It’s in a vat somewhere and one day soon it will be transmogrified into a black statue; and if turning a glorious White hero into a dark image isn’t apposite of the sorry last seventy years of American history, I don’t know what would be.

“The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center (JSAAHC), a Black-led public research nonprofit in Charlottesville, Virginia, is looking for artists to transform the melted remains of the city’s Robert E. Lee statue into a new public work. Earlier this month, the organization opened the application for interested artists as part of the second phase of its Swords Into Plowshares initiative (March 3 2025).”

You will recall the lurid and Lovecraftian images that were projected all around the world in 2023. They had already very publicly and ostentatiously removed Lee and his horse from his longstanding public pedestal. It was a glorious piece of high art but on the heels of the Floyd mayhem the city fathers decided that Robert E. Lee’s day was done; but so potent was the symbol of the man, and so powerful his memory, that they decided to pull out all of the stops on this one. They could not simply put it in a basement somewhere, or destroy it, or put it in an American Racism Museum ringed about with suitable messages of warning and pleas for tolerance.

No, they had the white whale of the White race on their hands and so they decided to get lugubrious and melt it down. And when they did they did not stint on the publicity; for a week straight they sent out eerie and otherworldly images of the glowing of the metal, they showed Lee’s face being liquefied, they had the burning ingots, and they had the foundry workers dismantle, dismember, and burn it, as if the White race itself was being melted to the core. But that of course was just phase one. Now that they have this cauldron of Lee molecules like crazed cannibals they are going to reconstitute it into something more to their liking. And by the time they are done they will have turned the White man into the dark man—and the dastardly process will be complete.

“For the project’s artist selection process, a jury will choose up to five semi-finalists, who will be given $10,000 to develop design proposals for the new piece. Applicants are asked to upload a resume demonstrating their professional credentials, a statement of interest briefly describing what drew them to the project, and images and details of recently completed work. There is a $10 fee for the application, which will close at 11:59pm PT on April 25 2025.”

So now every hack sculptor and negro artiste will have their crack at the great man. This is the big one as it’s not every day you get the chance to take a true and bona fide White hero and turn it into a paean to Africa. And so in the ateliers where they have the posters of Afro Futurism and that bit about Forty Acres And A Mule hanging on the walls they get to go to the drawing boards to conjure up the next sick trick. They will set their minds roaming all across black history in this country, though admittedly it’s pretty slim pickings. They don’t have much to boast about but that won’t stop them from casting among the shopworn clichés and try to get the palm. And whoever wins will be feted far and wide and lionized as the person who not only laid Robert E low, but caused him to live forever in the form of a symbol of his defeat. That, at any rate, is the story coming out of Virginia these days.

“Following a public parks survey, the site of the future artwork is expected to be announced by the end of this year. The location will be chosen based on conversations with city officials, community feedback, and historical research, which Douglas said has involved examining the broader history of public parks, many of which originated from plantations and were later subjected to racist segregation under Virginia’s Public Exclusionary Act of 1926.”

No doubt for them this is the big one. It’s true that the heyday of black worship is currently in decline, as a somewhat sobered nation is taking stock of all of their depredations. And when the statue is finally unveiled in a couple of years one can’t help think that its reception will be just a bit anti-climatic, certainly in comparison with the glee and joy that accompanied the news of the melting. But they will simply put their heads down and ignore the shifting tides of history.

And you can be sure when the great day comes all the lying media will be out in full force to announce the supposedly glorious end of what is really an unseemly project. The crowd will look on gravely and the public officials will speak of the horrid history of racism; it will seem like they have tin ears of course but that won’t stop them from trying to put on a brave face; after all they have Robert E Lee tied up in the worst kind of chains and it is, they think, they who will now control this memory. Nothing of course could be further from the truth, but they will proceed with their empty charade and their meaningless protest. As always with the negros it will be a poor thing but their own.

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

https://hyperallergic.com/990094/charlo ... ee-statue/

[Douglas Mercer]

Red bronze ingots composed from Charlottesville’s former Robert Lee confederate monument, which was melted down in 2023 (photo courtesy Swords Into Plowshares)

[Douglas Mercer]

The Rev. Isaac Collins speaks at a foundry about the biblical meaning of “swords into plowshares” while a worker prepares to melt Charlottesville’s bronze monument of Robert E. Lee in a furnace, Oct. 21, 2023

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

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