Confederate monuments bear what the anthropological theorist Michael Taussig would call a public secret: something that is privately known but collectively denied. Even Lee’s burial site at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. — where he served as president after the war — has changed. The university decided to focus on Lee the civilian rather than Lee the general, for example by moving a prominent portrait of him in uniform. That’s why the idea to melt Lee down, as violent as it might initially seem, struck me as so apt. Confederate monuments went up with rich, emotional ceremonies that created historical memory and solidified group identity.

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Persons: Michael Taussig, Jim Crow, Dr, Taussig, don’t, Robert E, Lee, Lee’s, I’ve, you’re Organizations: Arlington House, Arlington National Cemetery, Lee University Locations: Arlington, Washington, Lexington , Va, —