Town square most visible reflection of community

Bentonville is the greatest town in America. With one example after another, what was unimaginable becomes reality.

Our town square monument remains a highly visible outward reflection of us. Yet it recalls a history that is less about Bentonville, and more about the war over slavery that was led by the large plantation states to our east and south. During the Atlantic slave trade, 12 million people were captured. Almost a quarter of them were children. Nearly 2 million died in transit. At the time of our Civil War, there were 4 million slaves in the United States. Fewer than 3 percent of them were in Arkansas.

More Americans died fighting over slavery than died in all our other wars combined. Whether their cause was right or wrong, there were countless examples of individual valor on both sides. Worthy of remembrance and admiration. Worthy of artistic expression. Worthy of a statue reflecting that history.

But most confederate monuments, like the one in Bentonville, were placed decades after the end of the Civil War as part of the Jim Crow era. Locations were chosen in front of courthouses and in central squares. The message was terrifyingly clear. Along with the laws being passed at the time, black people were not to be treated with equality in any aspect of life, including before the law.

For many people, the location of these monuments continues to reflect that historical message and fear to this day. And to this day, that message, that reality, and that fear, remain impossible to fully comprehend by anyone who is white.

The issue is not history, nor the potential loss of it. We have museums, cemeteries, books and libraries where history is preserved. An inscription on the Bentonville confederate monument reads "They Fought for Home and Fatherland". An interesting choice of words for those who, in truth, fought an insurrection to divide and destroy the United States and its founding principles. A plaque added years later implies the statue is of James Berry. It's not. Never was. Space is available to preserve our civil war monuments in places where we remember history uncensored.

The issue is that more than a half century after the Jim Crow segregation laws were repealed, a monument that reflects its message of racial inequality and oppression continues to cast its shadow on our courthouse steps in our town square. In our most visible place that could, instead, reflect what we all truly revere and celebrate.

Northwest Arkansas, and especially Bentonville, are astonishingly progressive, both economically and culturally. We can continue that example and that leadership. Our most visible monument can reflect who we really are. It can reflect our highest ideals, and our greatest hopes for our children and our grandchildren. It can reflect what makes us great. It can be our most visible true reflection of us.

I'm betting the people at Crystal Bridges, including Alice Walton, will roll up their sleeves and get to work on ideas with us. Let's get started.

Ron Stratton

Bella Vista

Editorial on 11/17/2017

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