SUMMARY: Cities around the country are grappling with whether to keep or take down monuments. In Louisville, Kentucky, a monument honoring confederate soldiers has been the source of controversy for years, even after its removal. Forty miles to the southwest, in the town of Brandenburg, the statue was taken with open arms. Jeffrey Brown reports on Kentucky's understanding of its past and present.
SUMMARY: How should Americans remember the past and confront the deep wounds of slavery? The events of recent weeks have intensified a national conversation about Confederate monuments, with calls to remove them from public spaces. William Brangham talks to Peniel Joseph of the University of Texas, W. Fitzhugh Brundage of the University of North Carolina, Pierre McGraw of the Monumental Task Committee.
SUMMARY: The backdrop of Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, was a plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the city's downtown. What's the story behind such monuments and why do we continue to struggle with the legacy of the Civil War? Edward Ayers of the University of Richmond joins William Brangham to offer some historical context.
SUMMARY: Statues of Confederate leaders have been removed in the night, torn down by protesters and seen as a flash point for communities, especially in the South. What challenges do cities face when trying to deal with controversial memorials, as well as the backlash? Hari Sreenivasan talks with Lt. Ryan Lee of the Portland Police Bureau; and Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington, Kentucky.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the week’s news, including the historic Supreme Court overturning state bans on same-sex marriage, the Court’s ruling preserving the Affordable Care Act and the growing movement to remove the Confederate flag symbols from public spaces in South Carolina.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): And to the analysis of Shields and Gerson. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson.
The first topic is going to be a total shocker, gay marriage. We have talked about it a little bit. The country struggled with it for quite some time.
Does legal acceptance mean cultural acceptance?
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Yes.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right. That was the shortest answer…
MARK SHIELDS: No, I really — I really do think this has been moving.
Unlike Roe v. Wade, where, quite frankly, 40 years later, opinions are still frozen, as it was moving toward a legislative solution, which is always the ideal in a democracy, that you can do it by popular vote and so forth, I don’t think there’s any question that the momentum behind the support for same-sex marriage, for equity was just exponential.
It went from 40 percent just five-and-a-half years ago of Americans to 60 percent now, 70 percent of men under the age of 49 — 49 — 18 to 49, 70 percent of women. It’s just — it’s incredible. So, I think that this just accelerates it and seals it.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Michael Gerson, we heard someone from the Heritage Foundation earlier on in the program say that this conversation is not over, that this could be long-lasting.
MICHAEL GERSON, Washington Post: Well, I think I agree with Mark on this. This has moved unbelievably swiftly.
Seven years ago this summer in August, the current President of the United States said that he believed that marriage was a sacred woman of a man — a sacred union of a man and woman, seven years ago. That viewpoint has now been declared illegal as a basis for law in all 50 states, in seven years. I don’t know any precedent for that. That’s pretty extraordinary.
If you step back a little bit, there are some broad cultural reasons for this, not just the court. But there’s really the strategy of coming out, in which more Americans now know people who are gay, which I think has changed and humanized this debate in many ways, change in sexual mores that you see in Hollywood and other places that have taken place over the last few decades, and a change in strategy in the courts, really going — wanting to join a bourgeois institution, marriage, and making a conservative argument to people like Andrew Sullivan and Jon Rauch, making conservative arguments for stability and commitment.
This was an argument that appealed to Middle America. And it is the argument that won in this court today.
SUMMARY: As more politicians and governments call for the removal of the Confederate flag from public life, and retailers like Amazon and Walmart bar the sale of flag memorabilia, Judy Woodruff talks to Jack Hunter of Rare.us, author Isabel Wilkerson and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention about Southern legacy and confronting difficult history.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The wave of reactions to the Confederate Flag today reached into state capitols across the south. The governors of Virginia and North Carolina both called for taking the flag off special-order license plates.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, should be taken out of that state’s capitol rotunda. And, in Mississippi, the speaker of the statehouse called for the removal of the Confederate emblem from the state flag.
We use this moment to take a look at the South of today with Russell Moore, who is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Liberty Commission. Jack Hunter is a radio host and blogger in South Carolina who has used the identity the Southern Avenger. And from Atlanta is Isabel Wilkerson. She’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Warmth of Other Suns,” about Southern black migration.
And we welcome all three of you to the program.
Russell Moore, let me start with you.
What role does the Confederate Flag play in the identity of the South today, do you believe?
RUSSELL MOORE, Southern Baptist Convention: Well, I think Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol that causes a great deal of division and reminds us of a really hurtful legacy and past.
So, I think people see it in different ways. And I think what some people see in the Confederate Flag is a sense of Southern assertion that the South matters. So, for instance I was at a conference one time where the speaker, every time that he would reference saying something ignorant, would do it in a Southern accent.
I think there are some Southerners, black and white, who feel as though the rest of the country looks down on the South as uneducated and backward. And for some people, that was a symbol of defiance against that.
But it’s really clear that the way the Confederate Battle Flag has been used, not only initially in terms of the Confederate States of America, but in our more recent history in terms of terrorist acts against African-Americans, that this is a symbol that causes unnecessary division.
