Yellowhammer News editor J. Pepper Bryars argued against removing statues and monuments memorializing “regular” Confederate soldiers during a discussion about historical symbolism held this week at the Randolph School in Huntsville.

“There’s a difference between honoring the politicians and generals who led our state into the Civil War and remembering the young men who fought and died in the war,” Bryars told the assembly of several hundred high school students.

“Many of these statues aren’t of Jefferson Davis and weren’t erected in response to the Civil Rights Movement,” he said. “They are of nameless soldiers or are simple markers that were erected 100-years ago by the sons and daughters – the orphans – of regular soldiers who went off to war but who never came home, and whose lives would have gone unrecognized and unremembered if not for these monuments.”

Bryars recounted the infamous destruction of one such memorial last year in North Carolina that was erected in the 1920s by the daughters of soldiers who died in the war, saying such behavior was “disgraceful, contemptible, and has no place in the United States of America.”

Other panelists included David Person, a radio personality and civil rights activist, and Dr. LeeAnna Keith, a published historian of the Reconstruction era who teaches at the Collegiate School in New York City.

Person spoke in favor of removing the monuments, especially those installed on property owned and maintained by the taxpayers. He wrote about the issue in an article titled “Truth Behind Confederate Symbolism” published in Message Magazine.

Keith expanded upon her argument first made in a piece for AL.com titled, “Put progressive Civil War Republicans on a pedestal.” She said we should erect new monuments focusing on those who pursued racial justice during the Civil War and its aftermath.  

Bryars first made the distinction between monuments honoring politicians and generals and those remembering average soldiers in an article published last year titled, “America, how should we remember this soldier?”

The panel discussion was part of Randolph’s annual series where its upperclassmen discuss and grapple with current events. Previous year’s topics included the 2016 presidential election, intervention in the Syrian civil war, and free speech issues.

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