Hello everyone!
I've contacted the mods and they gave me permission to post this here. I am a student from the Netherlands, and I am currently doing my master thesis on how people from Richmond feel about Monument Avenue now that most of the Confederate monuments have been removed.
If anyone here wants to participate (anonymously) in this research, please, send me a message! Regardless of whether you loved the Confederate monuments or hated them, regardless of whether you've lived in Richmond for a long time or only recently moved there, I would love to hear your perspective on it. I have done interviews via DMs or via Zoom voice call. The Zoom interviews have taken roughly 40 minutes on average so far. Just let me know what you are more comfortable with.
Have a great day everyone!
EDIT: A few people have pointed out to me that this form of data collection is pretty biased. This is true, I am aware of that. However, I am still doing this for two reasons. First, within my research methodology, it isn't necessarily a problem to have a biased sample size as long as you don't generalise your findings beyond the groups you have actually included. And second, I tried to find people to interview in a bunch of other places and got no responses there. So... I've had to find people on Reddit instead.
I’ve been researching the history of local landmarks lately and thought it important to share some of my recent findings.
Have you ever seen the big monument at Queen and University in downtown Toronto? It’s very prominent and hard to ignore with the winged figure perched on a tall pedestal.
Have you ever wondered what the monument was dedicated to?
Well, it’s the South African War Memorial. It was Canada’s first official international war and 7,000 Canadian volunteers went to fight at the beginning of the 20th century. 267 Canadian soldiers were killed. See Wikipedia link for a picture:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_War_Memorial_(Toronto)
What people generally don’t know (or acknowledge) though is at least 48,000 civilians - white Boer settlers and black residents - died in literal concentration camps run by British forces.
“Canadian troops burned Boer houses and farms, and moved civilians to internment camps. In these filthy camps, an estimated 28,000 prisoners died of disease, most of them women, children, and black workers. Civilian deaths provoked outrage in Britain and in Canada. This harsh strategy eventually defeated the Boers.”
https://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/boer/boerwarhistory_e.html
What’s perhaps most troubling about the lack of context around this monument is how the deaths of black people are completely invisible and so is the context for how the outcome of this war became a precursor to Apartheid.
“Blacks fought and died in large numbers for the British army in the conflict. They worked as scouts, wagon drivers and spies. And 120,000 were herded into concentration camps where one in six [20,000] perished.
...
Nearly 28,000 Afrikaners [white Boers] succumbed to starvation, disease and exposure in the camps as the British army [including Canadians] razed thousands of farm houses to deny the Boer commandos support in the bush. The immense suffering they caused helped drive the National Party to victory in 1948 and provided a justification for apartheid.”
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1999/oct/10/focus.news
Epilogue:
The British forces in South Africa - including the concentration camps - were overseen by Lord Kitchener. He went on to serve in WWI and die in a naval attack. Berlin, Ontario was renamed Kitchener in his honour (a name it holds to this day).
PSA: Now you know.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in boston, but he grew up in Richmond and spent most of his life here. He considered himself a virginian, but he is commonly associated with baltimore because he did some work there and he died there. He changed literature forever, and is one of the greatest writers of all time. We already have a museum for him in Richmond about his time spent here, so I think the city already sees him as a richmonder. I would love to see a statue of him in monument avenue one day.
https://www.richmond.com/news/local/statue-of-jefferson-davis-torn-down-on-monument-avenue/article_64865aee-76bc-54e1-8e90-2fa749f8877b.html#utm_campaign=blox&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
