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'We're Being More Mindful' Monument Avenue Commission Quietly Continues Work

Mallory Noe-Payne
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RADIOIQ

 

 

Richmond’s Monument Avenue Commission held one of its final community meetings Thursday night. Almost a year ago the group was tasked with a big question: What should Virginia’s capitol city do with its confederate monuments?

In the months since, that issue has become a flashpoint. Caught in the middle of that tension, the Monument Avenue Commission has aimed to keep things civil.

 

To try to keep dialogue productive, the seven-person commission has taken the conversation to the community. So far they’ve been to the Richmond Public Library, talked to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and most recently met with a group at a local Unitarian Church.

Thursday evening at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond, about 70 church and community members have broken up into small circles.

“Be aware of your language and actions to ensure that everyone feels safe and comfortable,” directs one facilitator.

The groups are led through a series of questions: what do you think should happen to the monuments? How would you add context?

 

 

People are willing to be less incendiary. They're willing to actually sit down and listen to their neighbor even if they don't agree with them.

Anita Hill openly admits she hates the monuments. She proposes adding statues of slaves, modeled after real people and strung together in chains along the grassy median between each Confederate general.

“I think the visual impact has to be as startling as those statues are huge,” Hill says.

Another participant, Beth O’Leary, suggests natural stone monoliths. 500 of them in total, surrounding the monuments.

“Each stone representing a thousand men women and children who were enslaved and sold out of Richmond,” explains O’Leary.

There are nods around the circle, and a scribe jots down the notes that will later get read to members of the commission.

Credit Mallory Noe-Payne / RADIOIQ
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RADIOIQ
A community member suggests a monument to Gabriel Prosser, an enslaved blacksmith in Richmond. Prosser was executed after a failed slave revolt.

Clyde Bowie lives on Monument Avenue and loves it there. He chimes in after O’Leary’s proposal.

“You’re proposal sounds interesting, but I really don’t know that Monument Avenue is the place to have this debate or to have this presentation. First of all it’s a place where people live,” he says.

These kinds of concrete ideas and mostly civil discussions are what the commission was hoping to get by shifting its focus away from large public forums.

“We’re being more mindful in how to have the voices at the table without the shouting matches, without the domination of one voice over another or one idea versus another,” says Christy Coleman, co-chair of the commission and CEO of the American Civil War Museum.

Since last summer, Coleman says she’s seen a shift in the tone of the conversation.

“People are willing to be less incendiary. They’re willing to actually sit down and listen to their neighbor even if they don’t agree with them. Where before they came armed for battle,” Coleman says. “That is the best thing that I’ve seen so far.”  

The Monument Avenue Commission will continue its work through the end of April. The group hopes to have a final report on the Mayor’s desk by the end of May.

 

For more information on Monument Avenue, pulled together by the American Civil War Museum, you can go to onmonumentave.com

 
 

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

 

Mallory Noe-Payne is a Radio IQ reporter based in Richmond.
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