The 2021 documentary How the Monuments Came Down provides a ninety-minute examination of the story of Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. The city was the second capital of the short-lived Confederacy – the first was Montgomery, Alabama – then between the 1890s and 1920s, Richmond was the site of significant efforts to memorialize the Lost Cause. One of those efforts was a mixture of urban development and historical mythmaking that became Monument Avenue, a grand boulevard that showcased memorials to Confederate heroes.  One hundred years later, a Richmond with a black-led city government was the site of counterefforts to equalize the types of representation in the city and to eventually remove the Confederate monuments. 

To view the trailer, click here: https://player.pbs.org/viralplayer/3055951048/

The narrative that is told in How the Monuments Came Down begins in the mid-1800s with the fact that African people  were brought into Richmond’s slave market to be sold to plantation owners and farmers in outlying rural counties. During the Civil War, of course, General Robert E. Lee, who was a Virginian, emerged as a hero to Southerners. After the defeat, then, the decades that followed brought Reconstruction, some small measure of black political power, and then the intentional destruction of that progress by white supremacists. By the 1890s, Jim Crow segregation was emerging, Congress was turning its back on the duty of policing the South, and by 1901 and 1902, Virginia had a new state constitution that disempowered and disenfranchised black people. Among these historical facts, we have the commentary of several historians and activists, most black and a few white, giving context and providing perspective for this history. 

The narrative of modern times in Richmond introduces to a host of local political figures and historians. The Civil Rights-era Crusade for Voters campaign is discussed as a turning point in politics, as is Interstate 95’s bisection of  the Jackson Ward community. By the late twentieth century, black candidates were winning some of the city’s elected offices and were making changes. Focusing on the documentary’s topic at hand, some of those former officials share that they were asked pointedly whether they would remove the Confederate monuments; most found it laughable that such symbolism would be their priority when problems like housing, transportation, and unemployment were more pressing. The issue would come up later, however, in an unlikely way. When Richmond native Arthur Ashe passed away in 1993, those who sought to memorialize him found themselves in quandary with where and how to place a black tennis star alongside Confederate generals. It would be a couple more decades before removal would become a serious option, and that chain of events came about in the late 2010s and early 2020s amid the Black Lives Matter protests.

How the Monuments Came Down provides a solid overview of a current sociopolitical issue using the local lens of a prominent city in the Upper South. The Lost Cause is a mythic narrative that was created more than a hundred years ago to defend and legitimize the actions of Southern secessionists, and Richmond showcases how it has succeeded mightily in its goals. The legacy of the Lost Cause is alive and well today, not only in the presence of stone or bronze monuments around the South but also in the hearts and minds of many white Southerners. For those who believe in it, destroying the Lost Cause myth is destroying history. For those who do not believe in this myth, its destruction is necessary to expose the truth, reckon with it, and come out on the other side having made progress. While I count myself among the latter group, I will note that, in this documentary, the voices for and against are not balanced; the Lost Cause’s proponents and adherents are noticeably underrepresented in the discussion. The voices we hear in this documentary are predominantly and overwhelmingly in favor of a more modern narrative that asserts the need for change.