How Many Statues Must Fall?

Even though historical figures have complex legacies, a few main points usually stand out. For instance, George Washington isn’t remembered—or revered—because he owned slaves. Many people, including many of his contemporaries, have owned slaves. Washington is remembered because he commanded the Continental Army, won the Revolutionary War and served honorably as America’s first president. He has become a symbol of freedom and independence; that’s why statues of him were built, and why they should stay up.

When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he celebrated “a great American” whose Emancipation Proclamation “came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.” Although Abraham Lincoln accepted the white consensus of his time that whites were superior to blacks, King obviously wasn’t endorsing that view. He recognized that the memorial commemorated Lincoln’s principal legacy—not his commonplace views or the entirety of his thinking, but his exceptional work to free the slaves.