"Consider, for example, the controversy stirred over a memorial erected not in the former Confederacy to celebrate a military leader, but rather in a small Union town that honored a black man. In October 1931, descendants of Confederate veterans gathered in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., to unveil their memorial to Heyward Shepherd, a black man who died during the abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 raid. In 1867, former Confederates began calling for a memorial to Shepherd as a victim of Brown’s misguided attempt to destroy the South and incite civil war. For decades, nothing happened. But when the local black college dedicated a tablet to Brown in 1918, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) renewed their efforts to reclaim the commemorative landscape.
Although they discovered that Shepherd was a free man accidentally killed in the raid, they chose to celebrate him as a loyal and faithful slave who had refused to participate in Brown’s abolitionist plot. With the rising prominence of civil rights groups like the NAACP speaking out against white supremacy, this narrative of Shepherd offered an alternative: a loyal black man who accepted his place in a segregated society.
The monument divided the African American community and exposed different political philosophies on how to confront the pervasive economic and social system of white supremacy. While some hoped that the monument might increase interracial harmony by stressing the fidelity of a black man, others expressed outrage with the UDC’s manipulation of history.
At the dedication, Pearl Tatten, the black music director and daughter of a Union soldier, unexpectedly rose and offered a different narrative. Rather than framing John Brown as a radical abolitionist who killed a faithful slave, she heralded Brown as the valiant defender of freedom who “struck the first blow” against the tyranny of slavery for which her father and other Union soldiers fought.
Condemning the memorial as the “Uncle Tom Slave Monument,” black leaders and the black press followed her lead and launched blistering attacks. But they did not settle for words alone. If whites insisted upon “giving the Confederate point of view” in memorializing a so-called faithful slave, African Americans would counter with their own. The following year, they dedicated another memorial to Brown — one that depicted him as a hero whose traits challenged acceptable black behavior in the Jim Crow South.
Despite continued opposition, the original stone monument to Shepherd remained. Forty years later it sparked renewed conflict between Confederate groups and the NAACP. Removed by the National Park Service (NPS) for renovations in 1976, the memorial was tucked away in storage. After an inquiry by the UDC, the NPS agreed to return it — if it was accompanied by interpretive plaque that explained its controversial history.
Both the UDC and the NAACP vehemently disagreed with this compromise. The UDC saw no need for a sign, while the NAACP saw no need for the memorial. Not wanting to exacerbate tensions, the park elected instead to return the stone memorial to the street but cover it with plywood.
For fourteen years, the memorial remained covered. When another round of queries forced the park to remove the plywood in 1994, administrators agreed only with the provision that an interpretive sign be added giving the memorial’s history and a tribute to Brown written by civil rights activist W.E.B Du Bois.
Neither side was any happier with this compromise than they had been with the proposal 14 years earlier. Confederate heritage groups derided the need for an interpretive sign. Monuments should speak for themselves, they declared. NAACP leaders hoped that the monument might be dumped in the Potomac River, castigating the Confederate heritage groups for implying that Shepherd and “thousands of other” African Americans supported the Confederacy.
Today the Shepherd memorial still stands in its inconspicuous spot along Potomac Street. And while its inscription is at the very least misleading, its presence — along with the NPS plaque — offers valuable lessons about the contested nature of Civil War memory.
If the NPS had not returned the Shepherd monument and provided the interpretive sign, it would have overlooked the African American activists who fought to reclaim their history of the Civil War as part of their quest for equal citizenship. In fact, it would be easier to forget that the Civil War’s legacy has always been contentious. But the war and its symbols have always held different meanings for different groups, and confronting that history is imperative."
The Faithful Slave Memorial - "On the night of October 16, 1859, Hayward Shepherd, an industrious and respected colored freeman, was mortally wounded by John Brown's raiders. In pursuance of his duties as an employee of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, he became the first victim of this attempted insurrection.
I'm not gong to get into a discussion about this but just found it interesting that statues/memorials have been a subject of contention and requests for removal for many, many years.
"This boulder is erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans as a memorial to Heyward Shepherd, exemplifying the character and faithfulness of thousands of negroes who, under many temptations throughout subsequent years of war, so conducted themselves that no stain was left upon a record which is the peculiar heritage of the American people, and an everlasting tribute to the best in both races."
