Lou Tanner  is a history teacher at Renaissance School in Charlottesville, two blocks from where the most horrific events took place. The school is across from one of the two statues that are most controversial

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Events over the last couple of weeks in particular have caused many a longtime resident like myself to wonder just where we are headed as a community. More quietly than most, I recently attended the event staged by one of the numerous outgrowths of that abscess we call the Klan. Though I made little noise, it was important to me to register my utter distaste for the views they espouse.

In my opinion, such groups have hijacked the issue over whether to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from its prestigious position in what was known till recently as Lee Park. It is completely respectable to argue for its retention for other reasons and some of these to my mind are compelling as one who simply thinks that the study and remembrance of History is vital. It has been of late been pointed out in connection with all this that as William Faulkner put it, “the past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” Nothing more persuasively illustrates this than the recent controversy. It can also be argued, however, that as another writer once put it, “the past is another country.

They do things differently there.” The facts of yesteryear, repellent as they rightfully are to today’s way of thinking, so completely shaped the worldviews and institutions of the likes of Lee and others that they did not at all possess the freedom of action we now enjoy. However much we might wish it were otherwise, many people accepted as traditions set in stone those very institutions and ideas we now think could have been and should have been eradicated long before. That Lee made choices different from those of a 21st century citizen should shock no one though we moderns might devoutly wish it had not been so.

There would have been no Civil War without the existence of African-American slavery. That much is obvious. ‘States rights’ was a doctrine that first and foremost protected that odious institution the South called ‘peculiar.’ South and North would simply not have been so different at all had African-American servitude not existed in the former. As an avid reader, a teacher of History, and a Iifelong resident of Virginia, I ponder this issue on a daily basis.

But precisely because I think about it so frequently, I worry about what generations to come might remember about what came before them. Why is our own society and indeed our entire world so troubled still by issues that have roots in events that took place centuries ago. I worry about what they will remember and what they will pass on to their own descendants.

To my mind, the current decision to remove the statue of a flawed but heroic figure is little more than an act of erasure when it could be so much more. We could truly add something of enormous worth to an important dialogue instead of merely subtracting. The ‘narrative,’ to use a word much tossed around these days, could be enriched instead of just being eliminated.

If the statue of Robert E. Lee is simply removed, I firmly believe that generations to come will be even less challenged to think about the past. And since I think that the study of history is not only entertaining, for all its blemishes, but can illuminate the human condition, I offer this alternative.

Over forty years ago I came across one John Mercer Langston, courtesy of a Historical Marker outside the Louisa County Courthouse. Born in 1829, Langston was the son of a white slaveowner and a freed African American.

Sent to Oberlin College in Ohio, then the only college that would admit black Americans, he was active in the cause of abolition and education for freedmen in the years after the Civil War. He later served as Virginia’s first African-American Congressman, the first Dean of recently established Howard Law School, and the first President of what is now Virginia State University in Petersburg. He was also the great-uncle of poet Langston Hughes.

I can hardly conceive of a more interesting and completely worthy candidate for a statue alongside General Lee. I do not offer this merely as a bland way to sweep controversy under the rug in the name of maintaining a domestic tranquility that some clearly think is specious. This is a challenge. An artfully placed statue of John Mercer Langston beside that of Lee would give a more rounded picture of the national epic than anything else that I at any rate can imagine.

Historians love irony and indeed I think History itself does or it would not have presented us with so many examples. I would not say that the ferocity of recent events awoke me like a firebell in the night because another local already used that phrase. But the overheated rhetoric of late has made me wish there were a way out.

I have no desire to simply put bandaids on deep wounds by avoiding the inconvenient facts that the past has strewn in our way. But the irony of a statue of John Mercer Langston gazing for centuries at least across the way at Lee and Traveler might provide a sort of moment for reflection that would challenge observers—once they ascertained just who Langston was--to stop and think about the American past, scars and all. They might be challenged to read up on the subject and think about heroism and sacrifice and grace under pressure in a far larger sense and wonder what narrative we ought to be leaving to the future.

People might come to revere too this fierce opponent of slavery and dedicated advocate of an America Reconstructed on a fairer basis. As well, Charlottesville might again become known for something besides being rated a pleasant place to live or a place where History is used primarily as a cudgel to thwack those who disagree . It might again be a place that points forward to a constructive way out of our current bitterness.

As a Postscript: People should in general refrain from inserting their own thoughts into the mouths of the dead. Still, I cannot help but be amused at the thought of Lee and Langston, two men who must have acquired a healthy sense of humor given all the turmoil that surrounded them during their lives, inhabiting the same space. They might even have appreciated the irony themselves and applauded those who had the foresight to make such a thing happen.

For those who would like to know more about John Mercer Langston wiki is a decent place to begin though there is obviously much, much more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mercer_Langston