(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll visit Detroit Lakes as they celebrate their 150th birthday.

But first joining me now is our guest, Dr. Ashley Baggett, Professor of History at NDSU.

Dr. Baggett, thanks so much for joining us today.

- No problem.

So happy to be here.

- Well, as we get started, of course, you're the director of Women and Gender Study Program at NDSU.

Tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- I'm actually from Louisiana, so I grew up there, (Ashley laughs) and this topic is near and dear, because you can't go far without getting a Civil War battlefield or a monument or something of that.

So I grew up there and I had an undergrad degree in Secondary Education, Social Studies, taught for five years, middle school, high school, loved it.

But I just knew I wanted to delve deeper into the material and went back to grad school at Louisiana State University and finished my doctorate, and then I was offered a position here, and I've been here for about eight years and enjoying it very much, I find a lot of Southern transplants up here, so.

- Okay, well today's topic of course is about sort of the controversy over various Confederate Monuments across the nation, primarily in the South, but being removed and relocated somewhere, or maybe even destroyed.

And of course you said, your wheelhouse is the expertise of the South and the Civil War.

So that's what we wanna concentrate on.

So let's start off with, tell us why these monuments were constructed, and of course, during what time period were they established.

- They're mainly, you're gonna see the majority between 1880 and 1930, but the majority, the vast majority are gonna be 1890 to 1920, and that really matters.

So as a historian, I love to discuss context because that cultural context very much informs why these are going up at that time period.

And so most people know this as Jim Crow Era.

So this is the time period of disenfranchising or taking away the vote from African-Americans.

It is the time period of racial violence.

Lynching is just the tip of the iceberg, and you have all these laws that are systematizing and putting in white supremacy.

And there's also this mentality of the "Lost Cause," that is really taking hold in the South, particularly amongst white Southerners.

And part of that is because the Civil War had shown slavery was immoral evil.

They had won that battle.

They had won that war against slavery.

Slavery was seen as immoral.

And so Southerners, had to, I mean they are reeling from a war, and Southern honor is really important.

So they want something to have pride in.

And so they start to think about, well, how can we rethink this?

Or where can we find some source of pride?

And they look to the Civil War, but they had lost, Marshall Valor is very important to Southerners and the time period.

And so they say, "okay, well we didn't fight the Civil War over slavery.

We fought it over something more respectable, States' Rights."

And so you start to have this revisionism start to occur and white Southerners start to really flock to Lee as kind of that central cultural concept of the lost cause and really kind of supporting it.

But the lost cause is very much tied to white supremacy in that time period of that racial violence and that racial unrest that's going on.

- So are you saying then that that was the consensus of 19th century, well we are talking about historians, so what is the consensus of 19th century historians behind the erection of the monument?

- So each monument's going to, we need to look at the context of the local context and that's going to matter, but by and large historians, the American Historical Association put out a statement in 2017, August, 2017, where they talk about this debate because this debate has been raging for awhile.

And when the key things they say is we can learn from our past and we should learn from our past but in doing so we need accurate historical context and not misuse of history.

Sometimes people will cherry pick or misremember history, and so historians saying we need to actually look at the context an accurate historic, you know the history, the evidence.

So, they have experts that they have, and they say that they will very happily share and allow them to go and give a weigh in on certain issues with each monument that's coming up for debate.

They also talk about that you can't divorce it from its cultural context.

And this is really key in terms of looking at why do these monuments matter.

So they talk about what was going on, what was the lost cause, that's really critical.

They also, in the statement by the AHA they're going to say that it's not erasing history if a monument is removed because monuments are cultural artifacts.

And so by removing a cultural artifact, you aren't erasing history.

You're just moving it into a more proper contextual location because a monument is something you honor, and you respect, and the public weighs in and says, this is what matters to us.

And so removing it and treating it as evidence of the history of that time period is really critical.

And so they heavily believe in that.

They also very much believe there needs to be a public discussion.

And so the public needs to talk about this it's a very, very needed discussion.

So, in a time period that these monuments were erected African-Americans did not really have a say in this.

And so they're saying we need to get the entire public involved in this discussion and see what matters and then go from there.

- Well, and so that's what you've kind of moved in to today.

And while you're not here to expose the side of this, but you are stating, I think you're giving us a position sort of why to take them down, but particularly among people of color.

And so, what is their position on this do you feel?

- So people who believe that the monuments should be taken down or specific monuments should be taken down, often they see these monuments, particularly Confederate Generals and such like that, as representative of the Confederacy itself.

And the Confederacy, its constitution stood for slavery, absolutely white supremacy.

They see it as a reminder of racial injustice and continued racism in the present.

They see it as the state and governmental approval of it because in the past 10 years, $40 million in taxpayer money have gone to beautification of these monuments.

And so that's a lot, that's basically a governmental seal of approval.

And so if the government is supporting this mentality, that can be really upsetting.

They see it as un-American and undemocratic because freedom is central to Americans.

And so if the Confederacy stood for slavery, the enslavement of four million African-Americans, that's a problem in terms of our foundation, kind of ethos are of value and freedom.

And undemocratic because of the lack of voice of African-Americans in the construction of these public monuments.

- Well, generally speaking, I guess, for those who want to keep the monuments and maybe keep them where they are.

Can you talk more about what's their position and why?

- So for the people who want to keep the monuments up, a lot of them see this as part of Southern culture.

And so you've may have heard the phrase, "heritage not hate."

And so Southern valor, military valor, has long been a tradition.

And so they see this as part of Southern culture, Southern history, that military honor and valor and so they want to continue to see, rather than they see it as being erased if this is removed.

And so they're very much against that.

They also sometimes see it as States' Rights, you know, as symbolic of States' Rights.

And for some individuals, it is a monument to white supremacy.

There are some groups who do see it as a monument to white supremacy, some groups.

- Well, the recent removal of Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond drew a lot of attention seems like.

What was your reaction to that if you had any?

- Well, growing up in Louisiana, particularly in New Orleans, when I think about Lee, that was Lee Circle and the Lee Statue and the monument, I was iconic.

I remember being a kid and you know, you would just see it and you would think, "oh this is a monument.

This is something we respect."

And so I always ask "who is that?"

You know, as a young child and, "why is there a monument of this person?"

And so that really matters.

And I think that Richmond is indicative of that larger debate of civic virtue.

As public citizens, what do we value?

Who should be represented and honored?

Because monuments are to honor some values that we hold dear.

And so there's this necessary discussion is happening in Richmond and Charlottesville, it's happening.

And New Orleans, you know there's so many locations in which Confederate Monuments, I think there's still a couple thousand left in which people are having these debates and having these discussions of what is this monument?

What does it mean to us?

And does this individual, or this event represent what we consider honorable today?

- Okay.

Well, let's back up in time a little bit.

Can you talk about what was it like in the South right after the Civil War?

- Oh, absolutely.

It was pretty difficult.

So because the Civil Wars fought in Southerner's backyard, literally in their backyard, you have massive destruction.

So, estimates of deaths alone are 620,000 initially, but actually historians have uncovered that it's closer to 750,000 men died in the Civil War.

That would be the equivalent of 7 million men today.

I mean, that's just enormous to think about.

And so death was very much tied to a lot of people's experiences.

And so you have widows, you know, basically here you have all these individuals, these women who've lost sons, who've lost husbands, families, you know, just really torn apart.

And so there is that pain.

And how do we grieve?

Did their son, their husband die for something honorable or did they die for some immoral cause?

And so that is more than just a death.

How do you grieve for that individual?

And so there's a lot of issues in terms of social thought and grieving.

There's also, the economy was just in shambles.

The Confederate money is no longer valuable.

You have a cotton crop, there was disruption with shipping it and international trade.

The ball weevil had destroyed what little there was.

They couldn't find people to work because with the end of slavery, that was the basis of their economic system.

It's gone now.

They have to figure out how to transition to free labor.

There was a lots of violence.

So in my first book, I look into a lot of court records in New Orleans and there's just so much violence.

It was just endemic, racial violence and just assault and battery.

It's just, there's this theft.

And it's just a really difficult time period economically, socially, racially.

I mean there's just a lot of unrest.

- So what was a life like for blacks and newly freed slaves?

So now what happens and what did they do?

- So newly freed men and women, they basically, they're not given initially in 1865 and '66, they're not given any rights to basically say, "okay you're free."

Now what?

A lot of slavery had forbidden any type of literacy teaching to read and write for slaves.

So, here they're having to negotiate labor contracts without the ability to read and write.

And they're going to the Freedmen's Bureau for assistance with this because they can't read what they're signing or putting their mark to.

And you had white land owners who are trying to maintain as close to slavery as possible.

So what they do is they have these really bad contract labor contracts that they're trying to keep people in, and they would complain.

You would see over and over and over white landowners complaining.

They couldn't keep people tied to their land or working on their land and how they're going to produce their crop.

And so that mobility was actually central to African-Americans after the war, they saw that negotiating those contracts a lot of times they would say "no," because that mobility, that freedom to move was so important.

And in fact, family, and that ties to family because family was so important to African-Americans after the Civil War.

There are stories about the Freedmen's Bureau of individuals walking 500, 600 miles across country looking for former loved ones, children who had been sold away in slavery or spouses.

And so that was really an important component, but initially there's no protection, or no federal regulation of rights or citizenship for African-Americans.

So they're still facing massive, massive racial violence in 1865, '66 in the immediate aftermath of the war.

And that's what Black Codes where they would say truancy if somebody didn't have a job, they could be arrested and sold off to somebody in to work for the remainder of the year.

They also had the Convict Lease System and Sharecropping that emerged.

And it's really difficult situation, but you do have Freedmen's Schools and education and family that you see just really helping African-Americans define their own view of freedom.

- How long were Union troops stationed in the South?

- Well, it depends.

You know, during the war, certain areas are occupied earlier than others.

Louisiana probably was the longest occupied.

(Ashley chuckles) Read a lot about that in the archives.

But generally the Military Reconstruction Act starts in 1867, and you're going to see the last withdrawal of troops in 1877.

So for about a decade.

- 1867, okay.

Can you talk about the changes in the South once Union Troops left.

- Once the Union Troops left, so in 1877, when Union Troops were pulling out, the South is pretty much left to itself.

And so you see this attempt to kind of push off any type of Federal influence, or your Northern influence.

And so you have what is called by white Southerners this policy, they called it "Redemption," and so they tried to retake or have control of politics again.

And so you see white supremacists being elected, the denial of voting rights, a lot of violence going unpunished because now the Civil Rights Acts that would come down on the KKK and such like that they're gone and they're not being enforced basically anymore.

And so you have this essentially, you know that's what we talk about that growth about white supremacy government, you have a lot of violence to go and have that rise, that Jim Crow Era to be able to reestablish white supremacy.

- Well, in your class, how do young people, what do they think about issues that went around, that are debated around this and how do you better inform them?

- So students are actually really excited about this topic because they see it relevant.

And you know to me, as a historian, I love it whenever people go in and see the relevance of history and how it connects to the present.

And so they want to know more, and I love that, that the students want to know more about this debate.

And so they know they need to know the proper context, accurate information, and evidence to be informed.

And so in my classes, this semester right now, I'm teaching Civil War and Reconstruction and I approach it as you know, I give them the context and I provide essentially the evidence they need to be able to construct their own arguments.

But the idea is they need that evidence, they need that context and so students are really, it's always good whenever you see students very interested in the topic.

- Is there one thing you want people to know about this issue that perhaps they haven't thought about?

- I would say looking at the context, particularly unveiling ceremonies is pretty telling.

So if you look at a lot of unveiling ceremonies that is going to show you what individuals and the time period thought about these monuments and why they wanted to honor these individuals and have these public monuments in their area.

And so for a lot of them, the unveiling speeches basically talk about the Anglo-Saxon race and supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race.

You also have a lot of these speeches talking about, you know they talk about Southern honor, they validate secession and things like that.

And so when you read these, that context matters in this public debate of these monuments.

So looking each individual monument and seeing, okay, what is the specific context for this?

What was the local population saying?

Who had a voice, who didn't?

Frederick Douglas, a very well-known black leader basically said of these monuments, "They are monument to stupidity," and I think something else, and so there was this pushback from the black community saying, "no, we don't want these," but it wasn't listened to at the time period.

So having this public debate is really, really critical.

- Going forward, do you see more monuments being removed?

- I would say I'm a historian, so if it's not 50 years old, I typically try to avoid weight in my expertise.

But I think if we don't learn from history, I honestly believe if we don't learn from history and if we don't confront our past, then we will continue to have these needed discussions.

- Is there any national or regional push to have a place to put these Confederate monuments, I guess more of what we're talking about, where they could be placed and seen in the historical context?

- Absolutely, the AHA and other Southern organizations are very, I mean not just Southern, Historical organizations, are very much in support of not just, that's why they don't see this as erasing history to remove a monument.

They say they need to be placed in a proper historical context.

So placing them in museums or some other area in which you can provide the context to understand why these were built and what was going on matters.

And so they don't want, historians, we don't want to see historical evidence or cultural artifacts just destroyed.

We want to see it properly contextualize in the appropriate area.

So museums are one area that are place that's been brought up, but there's debates on some others.

- As a historian, of course we're about to run out of time here.

So, maybe I should stop there and just say, if people want more information, where can they go?

Who can they contact?

- Well there's some really great, the historical organization, so the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians are two really great websites you can go to.

And so for the AHA they have their statement that you can read about how experts, people who study this in depth, what they feel.

They also have articles you can read as well as resources so that you can learn more.

- Okay.

Well, we are out of time, but thanks so much for joining us today.

- I'm happy to be here.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) - Detroit Lakes Minnesota is a popular summer destination for many in the surrounding region.

In 2021, this city celebrated its 150th birthday with a big scale art project.

And the history surrounding the founding of the city is just as interesting.

(gentle lounge music) - [Narrator] Detroit Lakes is really a destination place.

We got tourism here.

It's a great place to come and visit.

People want to live here.

(gentle lounge music) - The original name of Detroit Lakes, Big and Little Detroit Lakes is "Gaiajawangag," and that's the Ojibwe word and it means a crossing in a sandy place.

The town was founded in 1871, but years and years and decades and decades and decades before that, where the city sits now is at an access point of four ox cart trails.

They went from Minneapolis to Winnipeg, and Pembina, North Dakota to Brainerd, and they all kind of met right here at this lake.

So we were kind of bound to be a trading area to begin with.

The first settler who came and built where Detroit Lake City is, was Colonel George Johnston.

He was a Civil War soldier.

He came here and he built a flour mill on the river.

He needed employees so people started moving and that was really kind of the catalyst of why the town was built right here.

The father of tourism is John Kay West, and he was really responsible for coming up with the Detroit Lakes propaganda to get people to come here as tourists, not just to come here to live and work.

(gentle music) - We have great tourism, but we also have a lot of good industry here.

We have some manufacturing facilities.

We've got a pretty vibrant retail community here in Detroit Lakes.

- The water here has been so many things.

It's been industry, the logging companies needed to use the water to transport the logs.

The tourism started almost immediately with the town to try to get people to come here and they're showcasing this.

You can't imagine how clean and pure this water is.

You can scoop out of the lake and drink the water out of the lake.

It's so pure.

I worked here for five years.

I had a pretty good grasp of what's made Detroit Lakes, Detroit Lakes.

We came up with a list of what we thought were the most important bullet points that I needed to cover.

And then as I got into it, they got more and more, and it grew into this huge 33 panels that's just history.

(happy music) - The 150 Sails is reflective of the 150 years of Detroit Lakes has been and the 150 years to come.

It's amazing amount of work.

Amazing amount of beauty that just makes our community shine.

Our logo as sail's upper pride suits the Lakers.

So the sail that was what we kind of settled on.

And so I designed the main shape and the look of it.

And then we met with a local company and they agreed right off the bat to do the whole thing to help sponsor the fabrication.

So we knew we would have these sailboats.

We planned to do 75 large, over four feet and 75 tabletops because some places don't have public space to put a large sailboat sculpture.

What's amazing is every artist got the same three-dimensional canvas.

It was a white sailboat sculpture.

And to see where their imagination took it, we have it ranging from a Monarch butterfly to wildlife, to seasonal, to landscape, to mosaics, photography.

We have artists that have done multiple pieces, and we've had artists as young as 10 and up to 82.

It's amazing to see what the imagination creativity is.

And then they have the sponsors support that by picking these different artists.

People were just amazed.

They were just blown away by the diversity of the artwork, the colors, what these things would be.

And now people driving around town, the comments are, they're just tickled to see these things when they walk into a business or they go to a park or they drive around town and they see these sculptures or rather fun splashes of creativity and color.

The whole point of this is to get people to come to Detroit Lakes to see the retails, the different locations, different businesses in our parks, within our community, the amenities that Detroit Lakes has.

(inviting music) - It's the people that make it special here.

It's a beautiful place to come and visit and people want to live and work here.

- It's a sense of community.

As I was going through the research, our whole team here was involved in the research for this.

And we were finding letters that people were writing to each other and writing to their friends back East and writing to their legislators and saying, this place here needs to have this, or it needs to have this new amenity, or we should build a pavilion.

We've seen the community spirit all the way from the beginning and it just flows all the way through.

It's not a surprise that the sense of community in Detroit Lakes is the way it is.

- And that's really the heart and the soul I think of what Detroit Lakes is, is we really support everybody to make sure our community shines bright.

(gentle waves crashing) - Well, that's all we have on Prairie Pulse, and as always thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.