(Before we plunge into this week’s issue, we’d like to update last week’s post. The Kansas City Star reported last Saturday that the federal prosecutor had announced the influx of federal agents in Kansas City had produced 97 arrests for homicides (5), illegal possession of firearms, various forms of drug trafficking, carjacking and being fugitives with outstanding warrants against them. In Portland, Homeland Security agents withdrew from the federal building area and although protests continued in the area they were described as “mostly peaceful.”)
In our last entry we suggested that our president and his allies on the right have spoken with forked tongues on the issue of states’ rights. On the one hand, the president has maintained it is the states’ responsibility to fight the coronavirus but in this campaign year when it suits his purpose to override states’ rights, he has sent federal militarized forces to cities with Democratic mayors presumably to fight violent crime although no local or state officials asked for that help.
A recent incident indicates the left side of the aisle is not immune to politically-oriented efforts to ignore the rights of states and to try to capitalize on the public mood. Our example is not as severe as our entry was last week, but it shows, we hope, that neither side has clean hands on this issue.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently asked the Congressional Joint Committee on the Library to remove eleven statues from Statuary Hall in the Capitol because they are men associated with the Confederacy. The House has approved a resolution formalizing that request and it is before the Senate as we compose this.
Our senior Senator Roy Blunt, a former history teacher and a Vice-President of The State Historical Society of Missouri, has objected. Almost 160 years ago, the federal government agreed to let the states decide which two famous state figures should be in the hall. Some states already have replaced statues of white supremacists and confederate leaders with figures deemed more appropriate. Blunt thinks a hearing would be good and he wants to know what states want to do.
The two Missourians who’ve been in Statuary Hall since 1895 are Senator Thomas Hart Benton and Francis Preston Blair, Junior, a Union General who represented the state in the House and in the Senate. Last year, the legislature passed a resolution to replace Benton with a statue of Harry S Truman. It hasn’t been done yet and we have suggested that the legislature has targeted the wrong man for replacement.
Given these times, the legislature might want to reconsider which of our statues is replaced. Benton represents the self-contradictory figure of which we find many in our pre-Civil War history. He owned slaves but came to oppose the institution, and refused the legislature’s orders that he follow its sentiments on protecting slavery, especially as the frontier expanded. That position cost him his seat in the U. S. Senate. We have found no record that he freed his slaves.
Our other statue is that of Francis Preston Blair Jr., who was a Union General but also an undeniable racist. He owned slaves and when the issue of emancipation came up, he proposed sending freed slaves to Central and South America. When he was the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate in 1868 his anti-emancipation speeches weakened the party’s effort, including his theme that African-Americans were “a semi-barbarous race…who are worshipers of fetishes and polygamists (who wanted to) subject the white woman to their unbridled lust.”
Harry Truman would be a fitting replacement for either man, Blair in particular. Truman has a bust in the National Capitol already—with the others who have served as Vice President. We have our own suggestion for proper representatives for Missouri. (At the end we’ll have a list of most of the statues that, though of marble and bronze, have feet of clay).
We have no problem with a Truman statue representing Missouri and we realize a lot of people have contributed a lot of money to create one. But we think our idea says much more about our state and the qualities of the people who should be in that hall and the qualities of the people who represent Missouri.
Other than a few women and Native Americans, the figures in Statuary Hall tilt heavily in favor of politicians and generals. But we think of two men who were neither but would better symbolize everything our state should always strive to be than any political figure or general ever has or could. Not that anybody would listen, but we would love to see our state represented by statues of
Stan Musial and Buck O’Neil.
I met both of them, briefly. In 1985 on the World Series Special passenger train Governor Ashcroft arranged to travel across the state from Kansas City to St. Louis for the third game of the Series, I asked Musial to tell me about the last time the Cardinals traveled by train. It was the trip back from Chicago after Musial had gotten his 3,000th hit. We talked for a few minutes. He laughed. My God! What a wonderful laugh! I still have that interview somewhere. And the day his bust was unveiled for the Hall of Famous Missourians at the Capitol he spent time talking baseball and other things, laughing often and then playing the harmonica he always carried. It was easy to love Stan Musial.
I cannot tell you a single thing John Ashcroft did or said as Governor—-except that he arranged that train trip during which I got to talk to Stan Musial.
When President Obama presented Musial with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Bernie Micklasz wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
“We’re a polarized nation in many ways. We dig into our respective corners. Republicans vs. Democrats. Liberals vs. Conservatives. We snarl at each other. We don’t seem to agree on much. But we can agree on this: Stan Musial transcends all of that. When it comes to The Man, there are no differences in ideology or opinion. It’s unanimous: We love The Man. Even at the late innings of his life, Musial still brings people together and makes them happy.”
“He’s been doing this for what, 70 years? I don’t believe Musial has ever received enough credit for the way he conducted himself during an extremely sensitive time in our history, during the period of baseball’s integration. Musial didn’t make speeches. He didn’t use a media platform. He simply went out of his way to show kindness and concern to African-American players who had to deal with intense hostility in the workplace.”
Buck O’Neil, the great symbol of Negro Leagues baseball (and so much more than that), finally got his bust in the Hall of Famous Missourians, too, at the State Capitol although he still deserves a full plaque in Cooperstown. The great Cubs player, Ernie Banks, advised us to, “Just follow Buck O’Neil. This man is a leader. He’s a genius. He understands people. He understands life…All of us should learn from this man. He’s an ambassador; he’s a humanitarian. We should follow him…” Buck had plenty of reason to be bitter because he was never allowed to play a major league game. But I heard him say one day, “Waste no tears for me. I didn’t come along too early—I was right on time.”
I sang a song with him one day. A lot of people in a lot of meetings with him got to sing with him, too. He recalled in his autobiography, “Sometimes at the end of my speeches I ask the audience to join hands and sing a little song. It goes like this: ‘The greatest thing in all my life is loving you.’ At first the audience is a little shy about holding hands and singing that corny song, but by and by, they all clasp one another’s hands and the voices get louder and louder. They give it up. Got to give it up.” I gave it up, holding hands with strangers, that day.
It will never happen of course, the placement of these two men in Statuary Hall as representatives of our state. But I can’t think of two other people who could represent what all Missourians should want to be and to serve as representatives of the best that Missouri could be than these two men.
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Although Speaker Pelosi refers to eleven statues, there are more that might be candidates for removal. We’ve looked at the list and here are those whose places of honor might come under scrutiny:
Alabama—Confederate General joseph Wheeler.
Arkansas—Judge U.M. Rose, supporter of the Confederacy, slave owner; and Senator James Paul Clarke, white supremacist.
Florida—Confederate General E. Kirby Smith
George—Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens
Louisiana—Edward White Jr., Confederate soldier who as member of the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the “separate but equal” concept.
Mississippi—Confederate President Jefferson Davis and James Z. George, Confederate Colonel and member of the state’s secession convention.
Missouri—Blair Jr., and Benton
North Carolina—Abraham B. Vance, Confederate officer; Charles Aycock, white supremacist
South Carolina—John Calhoun, defender of slavery, Wade Hampton, Confederate officer and post-war leader of the “lost cause” movement.
Tennessee—Andrew Jackson, slave owner and president who forced the Cherokees off their lands in the Carolinas and onto the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.
Virginia—Robert E. Lee, Confederate Commander
West Virginia—John E. Kenna—Confederate officer at age 16.
In addition, Speaker Pelosi wants the bust of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney to be removed from the busts of Supreme Court justices because of his authorship of the Dred Scott decision.