While we're tearing down Confederate statues in New Orleans, let's also tear down the monuments up north. The south's statutes of hate and white supremacy are physical, but the north's monuments live on through a twisted assortment of lies passed off as history. We were taught that the north fought to end slavery and for black liberation—neither is true. We believe those things largely because history is always written by the winners and usually sanitized for their benefit. The monuments built in honor of the Union (the north) are every bit as dangerous and impede black progress. This is not just a southern problem.

New Orleans' mayor gave a passionate speech on why the city chose to remove four Confederate monuments recently. He stated that the monuments "are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments celebrate a fictional, sanitized version of the Confederacy." We also celebrate a fictional and sanitized version of the Union.

White northerners gladly volunteered to fight in order to save the Union but 700 men from the Illinois 128th Infantry Regiment quit in protest after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. They were not willing, for one moment, to fight for black freedom. During the Civil War blacks in New York City were lynched and terrorized as riots engulfed the city. The insurrection was the largest in American history, aside from the Civil War itself. The Union routinely returned runaway slaves to their southern masters, until Major General Benjamin Butler realized that returning them only strengthened his enemies.

The only people who entered the Civil War with a singular focus on black freedom were the slaves themselves and many of the abolitionists who sympathized with them. As one woke black man observed during the War, "Our southern friend tells us the north is fighting for negroes. Our Union friend tells us they're not fighting to free the negroes but for the Union…We care nothing about the Union. We have been in it slaves over 250 years."

Indeed, the Emancipation Proclamation was simply a grand war strategy, aimed at weakening the Confederacy and interdicting European urges to back the Confederacy. It is hard to even recognize this history, as plain as it is, for the northern monuments obstruct our view in the 21st century. It matters. How are we to become a more perfect union if we embrace an imperfect history and understanding of ourselves?

Yes, monuments extolling the virtues of the Confederacy are repugnant and damaging to us as a nation. Would anyone think to erect monuments glorifying the Nazi era in Germany? But our fictitious and whitewashed views of the north must also be torn down, for they are damaging also. It is damaging to black people when we cannot clearly see our past and in-turn misinterpret our present circumstance. We are damaged when we believe those who object to conspicuous black suffering actually desire black freedom; for they are very different.

These northern monuments of misinformation reverberate to our politics today. The south and the conservative movement are often blatant in their hatred but we need not believe we have allies in the north and the political left, necessarily. As the slaves used the circumstances of war to fight for liberation, we ought to be clear on where our political opportunities lie today and push for black power. We can only see clearly when we remove the monuments blocking our view.

Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument

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