COLUMBIA — Two Upstate legislators want to erect a Confederate monument at the South Carolina Statehouse — the country's first-ever honoring black soldiers who purportedly fought for the South.
Word of the new monument comes amid a nationwide debate over Confederate monuments sparked by the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., earlier this year and just weeks after two other S.C. legislators proposed a Statehouse statue of Robert Smalls, an escaped slave from the Lowcountry who became a Civil War hero for the Union and a congressman.
South Carolina also is still healing after the horrific Charleston church shooting by an avowed white supremacist and the rancor of removing the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds after more than 50 years in the shooting's aftermath.
Republican Reps. Bill Chumley of Woodruff and Mike Burns of Travelers Rest announced Monday they plan to file a bill ahead of the January session to add the African-American Confederate memorial to the 31 monuments and markers already on the 18-acre Statehouse grounds.
"This history is the truth and is being white-washed," Burns told The Post and Courier. "Some of our history is good and some of our history is not so good. But they deserve to be honored for what they did on behalf of South Carolina."
Historians point out that most African-Americans in the Confederate ranks were slaves forced into the military service.
State and federal records reportedly list about 350 S.C. African-Americans recorded as serving in Confederate units or filing post-war pension applications, according a website cited by monument backers, blackconfederatesoldiers.com. The black veterans are listed as musicians, cooks, laborers and servants.
The idea of black Confederate soldiers took hold in the 1970s as a response to the popular miniseries "Roots," which depicted the harsh life of slaves, said Boston historian Kevin Levin, who is finishing a book, "Searching For Black Confederates."
"The stories about slaves in the war have been distorted to make them out to be soldiers," he said. "The myth of the lost cause allows white Southerners to reconfigure what war is about — that it's not about slavery."
Levin added the proposed South Carolina monument would be the first of its kind in the nation.
But not all black Confederate soldiers were slaves who had no choice but join the war, Burns said.
"There were freed men who actually chose to fight because they thought the South was being oppressed," he said. "It's a shame our third- and fifth-graders don't get to hear this side of the argument."
South Carolina has at least one monument on public property dedicated the African-Americans who supported the Confederacy. A Fort Mill park has a monument honoring "faithful slaves" during the Civil War with an inscription that reads in part: "Dedicated to the faithful slaves who, loyal to a sacred trust, toiled for the support of the army with matchless devotion and sterling fidelity."
The S.C. Statehouse already has three monuments honoring the Confederacy: a Confederate soldier monument at Gervais and Main streets; a monument honoring the contribution of Confederate women near Pendleton Street; and a large statue of Wade Hampton, a Confederate general who also became governor and a U.S. senator, in front of the building bearing his name.
But anger lingers among some South Carolinians about the Confederate flag's removal from the Statehouse in 2015 soon after the Charleston mass shooting. Burns and Chumley were among 27 House members who voted against taking away the Civil War banner. The S.C. Secessionist Party holds a rally and raises the Confederate flag on the grounds on the anniversary of its removal.
Arlene Barnum, right, watches as Braxton Spivey raises a Confederate flag on the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse on July 10, 2017, in Columbia. The South Carolina Secessionist Party sponsored the event to commemorate the day the flag was removed from the front lawn of the state capitol. The Secessionist Party says it will raise the flag every July 10th so a year will never go by without the Confederate flag flying. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
The Statehouse grounds has just one monument honoring for African-American history, which was erected as part of the 2000 compromise that moved the Confederate flag from the dome to a site in front of the Confederate solider monument.
Burns and Chumley say they have the support of Walter Curry of Columbia, a board member of the S.C. African-American Chamber of Commerce, who is a great-great-great-grandson of Lavinia Corley-Thompson, the only known female African-American Confederate veteran.
"African-American soldiers fought courageously on both sides in the Civil War," Curry said in a statement. "It is imperative that we as state give due honor to our South Carolina African-American Confederate Veterans. They are the forgotten ones."
Lawmakers said they are considering a sculpture or plaques listing names of African-American Confederate veterans.
"The Bible says to honor our fathers and mothers," Chumley said in a statement. "In that same vein, we can honor South Carolinians who showed more than 150 years ago that they loved their state as much then as Sandlappers (a nickname for South Carolinians) of all persuasions do today."
Calls came after Charlotteville to remove S.C. Statehouse monuments to Ben Tillman, a post-Civil War governor and U.S. senator who was a white supremacist, and Dr. J. Marion Sims, considered the father of gynecology who experimented on slaves. The senators proposing the Robert Smalls statue — Greg Gregory, R-Lancaster, and Darrell Jackson, D-Columbia — said they would not push to remove any monuments.
Jackson called plans for a African-American Confederate monument a "sarcastic reaction" from two Republican Confederate flag supporters after the Smalls monument was proposed.
"Ours is a bi-partisan, bi-racial proposal about bringing people together, not creating something that will further divide us," said Jackson, who is African-American. Gregory is white.
Burns said that he started talking about his monument with Curry before news of the Smalls statue was released last month.
Burns said he would agree to a proposal from Rep. Todd Rutherford, an African-American who is the House Democratic leader, that the monument should honor black soldiers who fought for the Union and the Confederacy.
"You do have to recognize both sides," Rutherford said.
The black Confederate monument faces other obstacles. Burns and Chumley's plans are running into resistance within their own party.
"Now is not the time to be discussing the removal or the erection of monuments," said Rep. Gary Simrill, a Rock Hill Republican who is the House Republican leader.
