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The Freedmen’S Memorial To Lincoln: A Postscript To Stone Monuments And Flexible Laws, J. Peter Byrne
The Freedmen’S Memorial To Lincoln: A Postscript To Stone Monuments And Flexible Laws, J. Peter Byrne
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In a recent essay in the Florida Law Review Online, I argued that historic preservation law poses no significant barrier to removal of Confederate monuments and even provides a useful process within which a community can study and debate the fate of specific statues. The cultural and legal issues surrounding the removal of Confederate monuments are presented in a surprising and paradoxical form in the controversy surrounding the 1876 Freedmen’s Memorial to Abraham Lincoln. Addressing these issues provides an interesting postscript to the seemingly easier questions raised by the removal of monuments to the Lost Cause. I argue that Section …
Stone Monuments And Flexible Laws: Removing Confederate Monuments Through Historic Preservation Laws, J. Peter Byrne
Stone Monuments And Flexible Laws: Removing Confederate Monuments Through Historic Preservation Laws, J. Peter Byrne
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay is a comment on an article by Jess Phelps and Jessica Owley, Etched in Stone: Historic Preservation Law and Confederate Monuments, published last year by the Florida Law Review. Contrary to their claims, historic preservation law does not seriously impede the removal or contextualization of Confederate memorials. The tangled and toxic heritage they signify does. The law rather creates the context within which parties contend about the meaning and continuing value of these monuments. Preservation law is not so much “etched in stone,” as a living requirement that we collectively, carefully address what remnants of the past …