By Dan Nelson
History erased
December 5, 2005: a recent campus poll has vindicated critics of the renamed Freedom Park this week when it showed that the majority of students have completely forgotten about the Civil War. Even history majors scratched their heads when asked about the Southern secession, and many could no longer identify important Civil War figures. “Jefferson Davis… didn’t he build Monticello?” one confused student was reported as saying.
Unbeknownst to most U of L students, the United States was once embroiled in a war within itself. This was called the Civil War, or “the War of Northern Aggression” to some. This supposed conflict occurred somewhere mid-19th century, but dates have now become fuzzy. Apparently, during this conflict, Kentucky was considered a border state, but the campus population, stripped of any concrete reminder, is unsure what this title may have meant. Many have dismissed the notion as preposterous because Kentucky, located in the center of the Eastern United States, clearly does not border anything. One theory suggests that the state once sat next to a short-lived separate country, or a “Confederacy” of some sort. While the purposes or consequences of such a preposterous event have now been rendered uncertain, what is clear is this conflict had nothing to do with an abandoned institution called “slavery.”
“My entire memory about the Civil War may have been erased, but one thing I certainly know is that it was about state rights and had nothing to do with racism,” one sage student told this reporter.
In the wake of this disturbing trend of historical amnesia, many university officials have been forced to eat crow. “At the time, it seemed a good idea,” President James Ramsey told The Cardinal, “but changing the name of Confederate Place to Civilwarneverhappened Boulevard has had repercussions we could not foresee.” Alterations to Confederate Place and the monument that resided there were controversial at the time. Hysteria quickly died down, however, shortly after the offending statue of a Confederate soldier was replaced with a stone replica of a multiracial family hugging a Native American.
What was lost, however, was something almost as valuable as the message of tolerance the new statue promoted. “If I had known that our student body’s historical insight into the Civil War hinged on this one statue, I would have never removed it,” Ramsey laments. Also now put into question is the subsequent renaming of Cardinal and Floyd Streets to NosuchthingasHiroshima Road and WhatHolocaust? Drive.
In order to reverse the damage done by removing the Confederate memorial, the university plans on implementing a rigorous program to remind students of Louisville’s Confederate past. From here on out, campus faculty has been ordered to refer to African American students as “freedmen,” and numerous Civil War reenactments have been scheduled throughout the year. At the end of each battle, SGA leaders plan to guide the fallen Southern soldiers to a symbolic “gateway to heaven.”
“It is sad that our actions have caused our students to forget their honest roots,” Ramsey wrote in a recent letter to the faculty. “We as a university must make it our top priority to stop focusing on the present and future, and instead take more time to celebrate, above all else, our state’s past role in the defense of a Southern-inspired racist system.”
“Not that the Civil War had anything to do with racism,” he was quick to add.
