Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Rev. Wiley Wallace and Carole Wallace sent a letter to the Lunenburg County Board of Supervisors June 17 requesting the Confederate Soldier statue in front of the Lunenburg County Courthouse be removed.

“To have the Confederate soldier in front of the courthouse, which is meting out justice to all citizens, is not in my mind, or my husband’s, is not the proper and appropriate image that should be projected in our county,”  Carole Wallace said. Thank you Rev and Mrs. Wallace.

Quite a few people would be in disagreement with the Wallace’s letter.  The Confederate Soldier was originally located in the Town of Victoria in 1916.  In 1968, it was moved to the courthouse.  So it’s been around a long time and it is viewed as part of the town’s heritage, and heritage is to be celebrated, it’s to be honored. But whose heritage are we talking about?

According to historynet.com, “Confederacy refers to 11 states that renounced their existing agreement with others of the United States in 1860–1861 and attempted to establish a new nation in which the authority of the central government would be strictly limited and the institution of slavery would be protected.”

I don’t celebrate the Confederacy, no person of color I know celebrates the protection of slavery.  I find it astonishing and horrendous that a race of people could have enslaved another race and almost a century and a half later, we continue to celebrate the system that perpetuated the slavery.

While I have not experienced slavery, I have experienced the aftermath.  I have experienced the dominance of whites over blacks with the Jim Crows laws.  I have experienced the pain of having my brother murdered by a group of white men for nothing more than being Black and being proud.  I have experienced the terror of seeing the white sheets and the Confederate flag flying with pride. So no, I don’t celebrate the confederacy and I don’t celebrate monuments that depict them in their glory.

Take the statues down and put them in a museum, because history should never be forgotten or else it might be repeated.  But don’t let them stand tall and proud as a representation of our country, we’re better than that.

Be blessed in Jesus’ name.

Mary Simmons is a columnist for The Kenbridge-Victoria Dispatch. She can be reached at aboxoflove37@gmail.com.