Zanzibar

The first time we visited sub-Saharan Africa in 2015, we stayed for just six nights. Most people we knew told us we were crazy to go all that way for less than a week. They were probably right. We won't likely ever do that again. I think any trip to that continent where we go further than Western Africa has to be at least a two-weeker. So after eight nights in Uganda and an extra one in Rwanda, we couldn't go home just yet. We had to go somewhere else for a few nights. We picked Zanzibar.

Zanzibar for us meant two things: (1) a gorgeous white beach fronting onto the endless pale blue Indian Ocean and (2) plenty of history. We scheduled five days for all of that, four of which involved the beach and the ocean and a lot of doing not much at all. That part of the agenda would have to wait until a day after we landed on Zanzibar, though. We started our time on the west coast in a place called Stone Town.

In case the name Zanzibar doesn't mean anything to you, it is an archipelago of 52 islands in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of the African continent. It's a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania which was absorbed into that country's territory in 1964, a move so significant that it changed the name of the country from Tanganyika to Tanzania (Tanzania is a smushing together of Tanganyika and Zanzibar). We knew all that before we landed in Zanzibar because we did our homework ahead of time, but if you think I am boasting about that, read on.

Most people in Zanzibar live on one of the two largest islands, Unguja and Pemba. Most people refer to Unguja informally as Zanzibar but that's technically incorrect. We didn't know that before we set foot on Unguja. No homework done, there. The capital city of Zanzibar is Zanzibar City and its historical center is known as Stone Town. We didn't know that either before we visited; we thought the name of the city itself was Stone Town.

How great are these names, by the way? Zanzibar sounds like something out of a centuries old romantic poem and Stone Town belongs somewhere in the Game of Thrones books, I'm sure. Actually, both have nothing to do with anything like that. Zanzibar got its name from Arab and Persian explorers who named the place after what they saw when they arrived. Zanjibār in Arabic and Zang-bār in Persian means black coast. And Stone Town refers to the buildings there being constructed from...ready for this...stone.

The rooftops of Stone Town at sunset.

But before we get to Zanzibar in 2023, let's go back to that 2015 trip just for a few paragraphs.

When we landed in Africa and actually exited an airport on that trip, we found ourselves in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Not a very African sounding place, right? Nothing like Zanzibar or Unguja. That's because the town of Victoria Falls was named after the famous waterfall which was named after Queen Victoria of England who ruled Britain and the rest of the British Empire in various parts of the world from 1837 to 1901. The reason a waterfall in sub-Saharan Africa is named after a British monarch is the dude that named the Falls happened to be British. His name was David Livingstone.

Before we planned that 2015 trip that started in Zimbabwe, I didn't know a whole lot about David Livingstone. I thought he was an explorer, some dude sent along with some sort of army or at least a few troops to conquer territory in far off lands for Britain so that nation could extract valuable assets out of the land they had just taken by force. Some of that is true. He was an explorer. But he didn't go with an army of any sort. He was actually there as a missionary and what he did with the many, many years he spent in Africa in his life had nothing whatsoever to do with Britain exploiting the lands and people in present day Zimbabwe and other colonies held by his mother nation.

I'm not saying Britain didn't do that. Just that Livingstone wasn't there for that.

If you ever make it to Victoria Falls National Park, you will likely come across an oversized statue of David Livingstone. There are a series of words around the base of that statue, including "Explorer" and "Missionary". One of other words around the base of the statue is "Liberator". I am sure it is that word that would most honor Livingstone's life's work because most of his time on this planet was spent trying to end the slave trade in that part of the world. He was convinced, right or wrong, that opening Southern Africa to equitable trade would end the practice of tribal leaders selling people into slavery as a means to enrich themselves. We can debate the merits of that theory, but he tried like hell to do anything he could to stop slavery.

Since that 2015 trip to Victoria Falls, we have bumped into Livingstone in a couple of different spots. We visited his grave in Westminster Abbey in 2016 and we made a pilgrimage to his childhood home last year just outside of Glasgow, Scotland. Zanzibar would be another opportunity to check in with David Livingstone because Zanzibar was a center of international trade on the African side of the Indian Ocean. And one of its main commodities available for purchase was slaves.

Livingstone first set foot in Zanzibar in 1864, 24 years after he first set sail for Africa. When he arrived there, Zanzibar was under control of the first Sultan of Zanzibar, Sayyid Majid bin Said Al-Busaid. His father was the Sultan of Oman, who made the decision that upon his death that Omani territory be divided between two of his sons; his third son became the Sultan of Oman and his sixth, Majid, became the Sultan of Zanzibar. 

Now, lest you think Majid got the short end of this stick here, consider this: his father valued Zanzibar's location so much that he relocated the country's capital from Muscat to Stone Town. Zanzibar was that important as a port of trade between Europe; all the lands around the Indian Ocean (including Persia, the Middle East and India) and the east coast of Africa. Think about all the riches pouring through this tiny series of islands off Africa's coast. Silk. Cloth. Spices. Fruit. Ivory. Gold. Slaves. It was this sort of bonanza that led the Omanis to take it from the Portuguese in 1698.

Of course, the Portuguese knew all this too. They started looking for a means to import goods from the Silk Road and other riches from Asia when the Ottoman Empire imposed impossibly high tariffs on goods transported through their territory after they seized Constantinople in 1453. With land routes to Persia, India and beyond no longer economically feasible, the Portuguese turned to the sea and found Zanzibar to be perfect for use a base of operations from which to operate their Indian Ocean trading post.

The Portuguese took Zanzibar from its Swahili-speaking natives who had established the islands as the trading post they became by the time the Portuguese arrived in the early 1500s. Swahili speakers were the first to trade African goods for those from Asia and some of the frequent visitors from Persia, India, China and the Arabian peninsula settled and intermarried, making Zanzibar one of the first true melting pots of different peoples in the world.

Of course, those "African goods" included slaves.

If you know where to look, a walk around Stone Town will get you an insight into a lot of Zanzibar's centuries of history. If you can keep your bearings about you. If you can avoid the motorcycles and tuk-tuks and dudes pulling very large carts by hand. And if you can manage not to get lost, that is. The place is a maze of thin streets, small squares and narrow alleys defined by remarkably similar (but admittedly sometimes ornate) stone buildings with wooden trim and balconies holding hotels and museums and offices and souvenir stores and anything else that an historic economic center of an entire coast of a continent needs to operate.

And if you don't know where to look on your walk or are worried about getting lost, there are plenty of guides available to show you. Keep up and you won't get lost at all. Providing you keep up. We found a good one and we did keep up, although there were a couple of spots where we had to hustle because he had gone in front of us and disappeared around one too many corners. It happens. We found him again. Just.

Walking the streets of Stone Town, you can see the wealth accumulated by the city's residents over hundreds of years of trade in the elaborately carved doors and door frames throughout the city. You can see the mix of religions and nationalities in the 52 mosques, four Hindu temples and two Christian cathedrals. You can see memories of the now banned ivory trade that passed through Zanzibar on the walls of the Dhow Palace Hotel, itself richly adorned with fantastic wood carvings around its entryways. You can see the massive fortress erected by the Sultans of Oman to protect their hard won and extremely important treasure of a town. And I suppose if you listen, you can hear the melting pot in Swahili, English, Arabic, Persian, Hindi and Swahinglish. 

You just won't likely hear it in Portuguese. Despite holding Zanzibar for 200 or so years, all memory of those times have been blown away over the Indian Ocean. They were that hated.

And you know what? You can probably even take in all of that if you do get lost. Is there really any such thing as getting lost any more when everyone has some sort of navigation app on their phone?

The Dhow Palace Hotel, Stone Town. Full of historical photographs of the ivory trade through Zanzibar.

A remnant of Zanzibar's slave market is still around too. Most of where it used to stand was taken and used for the construction of the Anglican cathedral in town. Walk inside that house of worship and you'll see a reddish stone circle in the flooring right in front of the altar. That's the spot where the whipping post stood in the market. It's forever immortalized in the flooring of the cathedral so we don't forget. 

Outside the cathedral, there's a small Slaves Monument, statues of four chained Africans waiting to be sold at auction while being watched over by fifth statue of a slave master, a black man afforded some measure of freedom to drive and punish people who looked like him on behalf of the slaves' owners, a sort of double humiliation for the slaves and the slave master alike while sparing the people who owned these people the trouble of meting out discipline. It's completely twisted but very carefully conceived, I am sure.

We have, by the way, seen all too many of these statues of black people chained up ready for sale over the last few years of our travels. The shock never really wears off. Neither does the shame, really.

But the really disturbing place to visit in this part of town is below the cathedral, two underground rooms with little light or ventilation that were used to hold slaves prior to auction. The tiny rooms held 50 men in one room and 75 women and children in the other. These places are so tight. It must have been about as excruciatingly hot and uncomfortable and unsanitary as you could make a place. Even the geometry of the rooms was worked out to I am sure impose more pain on the occupants. There is no way for a fully grown man to stand comfortably and the room is not a single height, which meant that even if most of the people packed into these places wanted to stand, there is not enough floor space to allow them to do so. It's so sickening and creepy being in a place like that knowing somebody probably designed these places to impart a great deal of discomfort over a long period of time on whoever was confined here.  

There are varying accounts of the number of people captured and sold into slavery through Zanzibar. I've read numbers as high as 8 million people over a couple of hundred years, but that was for the entire east coast of Africa. Our guide walking us around Stone Town put the number through that place at 1.2 million. Most ended up in homes in Oman or on plantations in Brazil, Mauritius or right there in Zanzibar. Apparently, spice farming was labor intensive in the 1800s. I can't even begin to imagine the hopelessness these people felt. 

David Livingstone made several trips to Zanzibar in his lifetime. Every time he visited, he knew the East African slave trade was alive and thriving on the island. He never saw the end of it. Livingstone died in 1873 from malaria and bleeding caused by dysentery in present day Zambia. He was 60 years old. The very next year, the British government, mostly through threats of force, brokered a treaty to close the slave market in Zanzibar. I am confident in saying that all trade in slaves did not end in 1874, either in Zanzibar or over the Indian Ocean. Our guide told us there was a slave market north of Stone Town on Unguja that was still operational until 1909. But 1874 may have been the beginning of the end of open trade in slaves.

After Livingstone's death, his two companions Chuma and Susi prepared his body for transport to England. He was ultimately laid to rest in Westminster Abbey where we found his grave some seven or so years ago. During the preparation of Livingstone's body, his heart was removed from his body and buried under the tree that he died beneath.

Earlier in this post I mentioned that Zanzibar was another opportunity for us to check in with David Livingstone, but it was not just by visiting a place where he had spent time trying to end the slave trade in that part of the world. The connection to Livingstone that we sought in Stone Town was through that tree he was buried under in Zambia. Enter the Anglican cathedral and look to the left side of the altar in the crossing of the church and you'll find a simple wooden cross. That cross was made from Livingstone's death tree. This was the connection that we sought in Zanzibar. That cross.

The former location of the whipping post is marked with a stone circle in the floor (top). Livingston's cross (bottom).

We spent altogether too little time in Stone Town. Slightly less than 24 hours is not enough time by any stretch of the imagination to spend in that place. We spent our one day on an organized tour which included our walk around Stone Town but it also included about half of the time on the full day tour outside of town. We missed the Freddie Mercury Museum. We missed Prison Island. We missed the night market in Forodhani Park. We missed a lot.

What I've chosen to write down in this blog post about Stone Town is not by any means all we got out of our time there. Sometimes for us, trips connect in ways that enrich our understanding of the world, the region or even the history of humankind. Sometimes those connections are wonderful and thrilling and uplifting. The connections described in this blog post are not in that category but they are important to make nonetheless.

We had an awesome time in Stone Town. The place is magical and enchanting. Everyone we met there treated us well and enriched our stay there. We also had some of the best food of our trip and for sure stayed in the best and most comfortable hotel of our 14 nights spent in Africa. I also managed to enjoy my first ride in a tuk-tuk anywhere in the world. We've seen these vehicles in places like Kenya and Peru but I've never actually taken a ride. After a walk around Stone Town for a couple of hours in 90+ degree temperatures, a ride home at the end of the day in a tuk-tuk was extremely welcome. Sometimes it's the small things.

Tuk-tuk ride home.

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How We Did It

Our walk around Stone Town was a portion of an organized tour we found on Viator.com before we left home for our couple of weeks in Africa. The full itinerary on this tour took us to a spice farm outside of Stone Town; got us our visit to the old slave market site and about a million other things; and ended at Prison Island, where there is a colony of giant tortoises. We cut the tour short before Prison Island so we could take a taxi over to the east side of the island for our four days on the beach. There are many tours like this on Viator. We ended up on the Spice Tour + Stone Town Tour + Prison Island tour. No complaints from me on this tour. Everything went seamlessly. 

I think my one regret about our time in Stone Town was that we didn't spend enough time there. There are choices we make when we travel to spend time in many places. Ultimately we decided to prioritize as many nights in one place as possible on Zanzibar. That decision got us just a single night in Stone Town. I will say that from walking around Stone Town for a couple of hours, the place seemed manageable and walkable and comfortable. At no time did we feel unsafe or in any danger whatsoever. If you want to stay in a hotel that will pamper you without breaking the bank, check out the Spice Tree Hotel by Turaco. It's a Marriott property now but it wasn't when we visited. The breakfast spread is just incredible. 

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No Monuments

This post is about a trip to see nothing. But it's also about something that's really pretty important.

Most of the trips I've blogged about in the last almost eight years have involved me traveling hundreds of miles from home, usually by getting on a plane and traveling over most or all of a continent or even further over some body of water. Sure, admittedly I've made some trips by rail or by getting in a car and driving but those are the exceptions. In other words, I'm typically writing about places not near to where I live. I've never really thought about blogging about somewhere I could go on a day trip. Until now, that is.

Richmond, Virginia is a bit less than a two hour drive from where we live. Under normal public health circumstances I never would have thought about heading somewhere as close as Richmond for a getaway. But with the seven day rolling national average of new COVID-19 cases just a bit higher than I'm comfortable with right now, there's no way I was getting on any sort of shared transportation and going far away. Plus, we had $100 of Best Western gift cards with March expiration dates. Better to use them to defray the cost of going somewhere new than lose them. So Richmond it was. And because we stayed overnight, I'm still not writing about a day trip.

So as I already said, this post is about a trip to see nothing.

It is about nothing because one of the reasons we traveled to Richmond was to see some things that are no longer there. They are gone. And it is the very fact that they are gone that is important. But we really wanted to not see them.

But first some context. History time.

In April of 1861, the Commonwealth of Virginia seceded from the United States. They followed the lead of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas and were followed by Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee. Those eleven states formed the Confederate States of America. The governors of Kentucky and Missouri tried to join them but their citizens were having none of it. When it came time to pick a capital, those eleven states picked Richmond. So yeah...we visited the former capital of the Confederate States of America for a weekend. Nothing like a little sedition on a winter weekend.

The Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy that followed secession by the southern states was about slavery, or the rights of one (white) human being to own as property other (black forced violently against their will from their homes in Africa) human beings. I thought it was important to state that as plainly as possible. Some folks out there will insist the War was about states' rights. Sure, maybe it was. But if you want to spin it that way then the specific right that was being fought over was the right of one human being to own as property other human beings. The War was about slavery.

It was also a treasonous rebellion and those who took part in the War for the South fought against their own country. I thought it was important to state that as plainly as possible too.

It is sometimes difficult for me to imagine Virginia where I live today as part of a breakaway state wanting no part of the United States hell bent on insisting that slavery was just and right. But I'm sure it was pretty fanatical about that idea back in the 1860s and I'm sure there were plenty of folks in Richmond that believed that the idea that black people were inferior to and should be enslaved by white people was for sure worth going to war about. 

Ultimately the South was on the wrong side of history and of human decency and their war didn't work. They lasted as a nation until May 5, 1865, when President Andrew Johnson declared the Confederacy dead after the surrender of most of their forces to Union Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman over the prior month. The South started a war they couldn't finish. The North was happy to finish it for them.

Then in the decades following the Confederacy's defeat, there started to emerge a legend in the South called the Lost Cause, an idea that the reason for secession and war was just and righteous. This idea was adopted by former Confederate officers and politicians in the South and was amplified by organizations such as the Daughters of the Confederacy. The idea here was that the actions of the leaders of the South, which in reality was nothing but out and out treason against the United States government, was not only justified, but was the right and correct thing to do. And so was slavery.

In many cities and towns in the South, this idea drove citizens to erect monuments to the people who fought in rebellion for the Confederacy. Richmond was no exception. In 1890, the city unveiled a monument to General Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. Imagine a country allowing one of its cities to erect a monument to celebrate the life of a traitor against his own government. It happened. In Richmond and a whole host of other places. 

Imagine also how former slaves would feel about somewhere they live celebrating the life and "achievements" of someone who went to war to keep them enslaved. That also happened. In Richmond and a whole host of other places.

Richmond didn't stop with the Lee statue. No sir! Over the next 39 years, the city put up statues celebrating J.E.B. Stuart, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Matthew Fontaine Maury. Not fully familiar with all of those names? Don't worry, I'll tell you a little about them later. Together the statues made up a stretch of one of the most prestigious streets in the city named Monument Avenue.

Monument Avenue was my number one reason to visit Richmond. Not to see the statues. But to see nothing. To see where they used to be. Because most of them are no longer there. Finally a small part of the United States has come to its senses. Mostly. 

I told you this post was about nothing and something really important at the same time. 

Stonewall Jackson was here. Monument Avenue and Arthur Ashe Boulevard.

So before we get to that, let's learn a little about who we didn't see, shall we? And I know some readers here will be thinking that it was a different time and we can't apply 21st century norms to something like betraying your country to participate in a war about slavery and it was history that actually happened and the statues should remain as part of the historical narrative of the South. Three thoughts here: 

(1) I don't think there are too many statues of Adolf Hitler in Germany or Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Benedict Arnold or King George III of England over here in the United States. Countries don't generally erect statues to commemorate defeated foes or traitors or leaders who lead their country to ruin. 

(2) The idea that slavery was wrong was actually around back in the 1860s. It's not, believe it or not, a 21st century notion. There were plenty of abolitionists around trying to stop it forever in this country and elsewhere in the world. If that doesn't convince you, think about how you would feel if you and your family were someone's property to treat however they liked; they could abuse, starve, beat, rape, work to death or even on a whim kill you or your family for no reason and with no consequences. They might also sell some of you and keep others of you. How would you feel about that? Ready to celebrate the leaders of a war to preserve that idea?

(3) Yes, we can. 

So about those monuments.

Of the five statues on Monument Avenue, Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson are probably the best known. Waging war on your own country has a way of making people famous, I guess. Both owned slaves (I'm sure that's a shocker!) and both willingly joined the Confederacy. I'm sure if you dug a little on line, you'll find all sorts of articles and accounts out there that neither man really made his feelings about slavery known. Those same articles might say that both men were devout Christians; that Jackson braved breaking the law by teaching slaves to read; and that Lee eventually may have shown abolitionist tendencies.

Don't believe it! It's a crock! The fact that neither man made their feelings about slavery known to all who they met doesn't mean they were against it. Their actions spoke volumes. I mean if you need any more proof than they were slave owners and that they took up arms against their own country to preserve that right, then I'm not sure what to tell you. So Jackson "only" owned six slaves maybe. That means he claimed as property six other human beings. Six!!! One is too many. He had six. 

And Lee's "abolitionist tendencies"? Let's hear from the man himself in an 1856 letter:

"The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known and ordered by a wise Merciful Providence."

So it's God's fault, is that correct? Seems it works that way for Jackson, too. Apologists for Jackson point to his Calvinist beliefs (that everything on Earth is as it was desired by God and that if slavery exists then it must be the will of God) that prevented him from questioning the very institution of slavery. Those same beliefs didn't lead him to believe that it was wrong for the South to secede for some reason. I mean before he participated in that it was part of the United States. Remember two things: these two owned slaves and they took up arms against the United States so they could continue to do so.

J.E.B. Stuart was here. Monument Avenue and Stuart Circle.

If Lee and Jackson are the most recognizable names on Monument Avenue, J.E.B Stuart and Matthew Fontaine Maury are likely the most obscure. Both were Virginians who resigned their commissions from the United States military when their home state seceded from the Union. Stuart became a General in the Confederate army. Maury was in charge of the Navy. Both, of course, like Lee and Jackson, fought like hell against their own country's government. Maury actually accomplished something notable in his career before he opted to join the South in rebellion: he made significant advances in naval meteorology and navigation. He's probably worthy of a statue if it wasn't for that whole being a traitor thing. You know...THAT.

Unlike Lee and Jackson, neither Stuart nor Maury owned slaves, although there is some debate about Stuart (he may have owned two and freed them before the Civil War started). But Maury did have some pretty out there ideas about preserving the economic boon of slavery (read: free labor) while removing the guilt of slave owners in the South. His idea? Move all the slaves to Brazil and set up plantations as money making ventures for American plantation owners. Keep the slaves in slavery; just move them elsewhere. Not sure this is what I consider enlightened.

And then there's Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy. Davis was a former United States Army officer; plantation owner; United States Congressman; United States Senator; and Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce who resigned his Senate post when the State of Mississippi seceded. Shortly thereafter, he was elected President of the Confederacy.

Like Lee and Jackson and Stuart and Maury, Davis willingly fought against the United States of America. Also like Lee and Jackson, he was a slaveowner, apparently at one time owning more than 100 slaves. More than 100 human beings. Think about that. Davis did think about it. A lot. Some of his thoughts are in the quote below.

"African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing. You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be."

Do these guys deserve statues in prominent places in American cities? Not in my view they don't. And apparently, not in Richmond's view either in 2020 and 2021, although I'm sure there's less than unanimous consensus about that. 

Matthew Maury was here. Monument Avenue and North Belmont Avenue. 

So why are these statues no longer on public display in Richmond? Well, on June 10 of last year, the statue of Jefferson Davis on Monument Avenue was torn down by a crowd of people protesting the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department. It was followed less than a month later by the City-ordered removal of the statues of Jackson, Maury and Stuart under a new law that allowed cities in Virginia to remove Confederate statues starting in July 2020. The removal of Lee's statue was ordered six days before the removal of Davis' but it's still there. Apparently it's coming down for real this summer.

What I expected to find in Richmond on our tour of Monument Avenue on the first Saturday of March this year was something similar to the last three pictures posted above. Simple monumental pedestals with their statues gone. I expected they would be the rough shape and size they are in the case of Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart because those two were topped with equestrian statues. I expected evidence of a little graffiti long since removed, although I was a little surprised to find some still in place on Stuart's pedestal.

I also expected to find some untruths. I got one of those at Stuart Circle. According to the inscription on the now untapped pedestal, Stuart "gave his life for his country." OK, sure. I'd say he lost his life in rebellion fighting against his country but shades of grey maybe. Or maybe not. Won't debate it here. In my visit to see the spots where Jackson, Maury and Stuart used to be on display, I got exactly what I expected.

At the monuments to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, I got something I didn't expect.

The Jefferson Davis Monument, without Davis but not much diminished.

The first monument we stopped at was the one to Jefferson Davis. We didn't plan it that way. We just hit Monument Avenue pretty close to it and so went there first. It is a shocking monument. I can't remember being this offended by something like this ever. Clearly visible on the center column of the monument are the words "President of the Confederate States of America." This is not just a monument to Jefferson Davis, it's clearly a celebration of the presidency of the Confederate States of America, a "country" that went to war with the United States. The monument is located in Richmond in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And last I checked, Virginia is part of the United States. 

To me, the Davis monument is different than the other three discussed earlier in this post. It's celebrating the existence of a nation that fought against the United States to maintain separation from our country because they wanted to keep black people as slaves. The Jackson, Maury and Stuart monuments are less clear about what those people did. Davis' monument is celebrating the idea of secession. How is that allowed?

There's one other thing that unnerved me about the Davis monument. Unlike the statue-less bases of Jackson, Maury and Stuart which look silly in their plain-ness without their namesake likenesses, Jefferson Davis' monument doesn't suffer much from the missing statue which I assume was mounted on the top of the column in the photograph above. The monuments to Jackson, Maury and Stuart are clearly diminished by the lack of the statues. The Davis monument isn't. It looks like it's still complete. If it were me in charge of Richmond or Virginia, I'd be looking to take more of this thing down. The removal of the statues of Jackson, Maury and Stuart shames the legacy of those men. More needs to be done to Davis' monument to get there.

Looking north up Monument Avenue towards the Robert E. Lee Memorial.

Then there's Robert E. Lee.

The Lee Memorial is the biggest of the five on Monument Avenue and it's located on the biggest plot of land, a massive traffic circle at the intersection of Monument Avenue and North Allen Avenue. It was the first erected and it's clearly the most important. It's also today the only one that still has its statue and it's the only one you cannot walk up to, because there's a fairly sturdy metal fence erected at the perimeter of the traffic circle.

Like the monuments to Davis, Jackson, Maury and Stuart, the Lee Memorial was defaced with graffiti. Unlike the other four, the graffiti hasn't been removed. Neither has the Black Lives Matter banner been stripped from just below the statue. And it's glorious. It's absolutely uplifting in its democracy.

Robert E. Lee was in charge of an army that fought against the United States. If he had won, he would have preserved the institution of slavery and helped establish a nation with that belief at its core, that black people were inferior to white people and they deserved to be owned as property. Some folks have made their thoughts known about this at every level of his Memorial in a rainbow of lurid colors.

But there are other truths about our society spray-painted on the Lee Memorial that have nothing to do with the Civil War necessarily. The idea that it's OK to discriminate against people that some folks may be uncomfortable around. The idea that some of society's institutions either deliberately or unconsciously work to preserve the current power structure. The idea that politicians are openly and unabashedly working to disadvantage people unlike themselves. There are a lot of different messages written on the Lee Memorial. Some of them are rude. Some of them are obscene. But almost every word of it rings true to me. I'm not going to re-write them in this blog but I'm sure you can zoom in and read some of them. Look up the ones that aren't familiar to you.

The Lee statue is still in place. I'll be happier when it comes down if that really happens this summer. I hope the city doesn't clean the rest of the Memorial or the concrete barriers spray-painted around the perimeter of the circle. I expect that they will. I can't imagine a city being OK with swear words written large and clearly on its public monuments.

I think the great thing about what's happened to the Lee Memorial is that it has been transformed from something inherently objectionable into something really powerful and optimistic. The defacing of the Memorial is a clear and obvious rejection of everything it stood for originally and the point of the thing has been completely re-messaged. It's more powerful to me leaving it in place as is (without the statue of course) than tearing it down completely. This is public art that really means something. I hope it stays but I'm not counting on it.

So that's what we saw on Monument Avenue. Before we left Richmond, though, we wanted to take a look at one more statue. 

The no longer available for public viewing J.E.B. Stuart statue is notable from a composition standpoint. Stuart's horse, were it still in place, is facing south with its head tilted slightly to the left and its front right hoof raised, which traditionally means the rider died as a result of wounds sustained in battle (which Stuart did). Stuart atop his horse, again...were he still in place, is not looking forward as he is mounted but instead his torso is twisted and he's facing west which allows the viewer to see his entire torso and face unblocked by any other part of the statue. Its a dramatic pose that you wouldn't normally see a rider strike.

In September of 2019, a second statue with this same pose was erected in Richmond in direct response to the artistry of Stuart's statue. This one, titled Rumors of War, was commissioned by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and stands just in front and to the right of their building just west of the Fan District. The horse's pose is identical to Stuart's horse, right down to the angle of the head and the full extension of the tail. The rider strikes a similar pose to Stuart but the likeness is quite different. Instead of a white man fighting to preserve slavery, Rumors of War features a young, dreadlocked black man in a hoodie and Nike sneakers.

Rumors of War was sculpted by Kehinde Wiley, the same artist who painted President Obama's portrait that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. It is of course intended as a direct response and contradiction to everything that Stuart's statue represents and it completely works, in a similar way to the graffiti and Black Lives Matter banner that you can see at the Lee Memorial. The irony is lost just a little bit now that Stuart's statue is no longer in place but that's really not a good enough reason to allow Stuart to return.

I think art that references past works directly or indirectly to provide a different interpretation of the original subject is so smart. Both Wiley's work and what the people of Richmond have done to the Lee Memorial do exactly that. And in completely different ways. The message is powerful in both cases, although it's a lot easier to see in the case of the Lee Memorial. Time will fade the full meaning of Rumors of War. The longer Stuart's statue is gone, the more difficult it will be to remember what the statue is referencing and refuting.

I'll be interested to see what happens in the near future to the Lee Memorial. How long will Richmond allow a vandalized, obscenity covered public monument to stay the way it is now? Will they actually take down the statue this summer? And if they do, will they use that opportunity to clean off the pedestal? Either way, will they continue to leave in place the concrete barriers, spray-painted or not, and the metal fence around the perimeter of the circle? Removing the graffiti or removing the pedestal entirely and re-purposing the circle might be more attractive, but erasing what's happened to something that never should have been there in the first place would be disappointing, I think. It's powerful the way it is. Remove the statue and erase what probably never should have been done in the first place but leave the rest please.

Not particularly elegant in its expression but neither is fighting to preserve slavery.

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How We Did It

There is nothing complicated about finding the five monuments or former monuments on Monument Avenue. Just make your way to that street in your preferred mode of transportation and start heading either north or south. You can't miss them. They range from Stuart Circle on the south end to Arthur Ashe Boulevard on the north end. In sequence south to north you'll find Stuart, Lee, Davis, Maury and then Jackson.

If you want to see Rumors or War, might as well do it before or after you see (or don't see, I suppose) Stonewall Jackson. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is located on Arthur Ashe Boulevard about a quarter of a mile west of where Jackson used to be. 

One of the best things about this tour is that it's all free. It took us a little more than an hour to see all six. We definitely spent the most time at Lee's Memorial. It definitely has way more to look at and take in than the other five. 

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