On June 27, 2015, Dylann Roof opened fire on a bible study group at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, South Carolina (Elliot).Roof, an unemployed 21-year-old from Columbia, entered the church, also referred to as Mother Emanuel, on the night of the 27th masquerading as a participant in the bible study. However, after participants began to pray, he stood up, pulled a Glock 41 out of his fanny pack, and aimed it directly at Susie Jackson, an elderly choir member. Roof would take the lives of nine people, all African American, including Clementa Pinckney, a South Carolina state senator and the senior pastor of the church. Survivors detailed Roof standing over the bodies of his victims spewing racial epithets and white replacement conspiracy theories. Roof had planned the attack for months, deliberately targeting Mother Emanuel due to its status as the oldest Black church in the country (Elliot).

 

Shortly after the attack, investigators unearthed extensive evidence of Roof’s online radicalization. On his Facebook profile, he posted images of himself donning jackets with white supremacist symbols such as the flag of apartheid-era South Africa. On his website titled “The Last Rhodesian,” Roof posted his manifestos detailing his negative views of different racial groups. However, perhaps the most infamous image of Roof pictured him brandishing a firearm while posing underneath the Confederate battle flag. In South Carolina, the heart of the old South, a century and a half after white Southerners fought under the “Stars and Bars” to keep Black people in chains, Dylann Roof slaughtered Black churchgoers in the name of the same flag (Elliot). The shooting led to tremendous public outcry but also produced bizarre comments from conservative politicians and pundits. Statements from mainstream Republican figures like Jeb Bush and Nikki Haley, the then governor of South Carolina, framed Roof’s motives as ambiguous and the shooting simply as a random product of masculine rage. Despite Roof’s clear gravitation towards Confederate iconography and white supremacist ideology, there existed a hesitancy to label his actions as racially motivated (Chait). While Haley and Bush may view the shooting as a one-off tragedy, even an elementary examination of the racial history of Charleston suggests that the Mother Emanuel shooting is merely a chapter in a long, painful story of white supremacist violence and Black degradation. 

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Strikingly, the most visible manifestation of this entrenched racial order stood a few hundred yards away from the church. In the center of Marion Square, perched overlooking Mother Emanuel, sat a statue of John C. Calhoun. The bronzed statesman’s eighty-foot pedestal made him plainly visible throughout downtown Charleston, even to the likes of Bush and Haley (Waters). As Dylann Roof entered Mother Emanuel to carry out his heinous deed, Calhoun, the father of the Confederate ideology and a champion of slavery, towered over him. To understand how the city of Charleston entered this moment requires a study of not only Calhoun but most importantly the men and women who worked to immortalize him. 

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Immortalizing Calhoun 

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Born and raised in South Carolina, John C. Calhoun began running his family’s plantation at the young age of 14 following his father’s death. Educated at Yale, his unparalleled oratory skills and breadth of political knowledge propelled him to the forefront of Southern governance (Bartlett 44).Throughout his career, he was elected to terms in both houses of Congress and served in multiple cabinet roles, including as vice president (Bartlett 15). His political doctrine of state’s rights and the notion of slavery as a positive good offered the foundation for a secessionist, white supremacist dogma in the South. 

 

Calhoun viewed the Constitution as a compact between sovereign states with the individual states holding ultimate authority over the federal government. His fervent belief in states’ rights would result in his resignation as vice president amidst the Nullification Crisis of 1832, as he disagreed with President Andrew Jackson’s stance that a state could not nullify federal law (Bartlett 196).Calhoun’s inflexibility on the question of Southern autonomy earned him the nickname the “Cast-Iron Man.” On the issue of slavery, Calhoun represents a progenitor of the white South’s moral defense of the peculiar institution. While most Southern statesmen in the early 19th century characterized slavery as a “necessary evil,” in a now infamous 1837 speech, Calhoun argued that “the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between [master and slave], is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good.” Calhoun based his argument on the principle of natural hierarchy and the notion that slavery offered the inferior African race protection in the form of a benevolent, paternal master (St. Olaf College). On March 31, 1850, John C. Calhoun succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 68. Shortly before his death, he reportedly exclaimed “The South, the poor South”: both prescient and fitting final words for a man who spent his career formulating and defending Southern political thought (Bartlett 374-375). 

 

While Calhoun died over a decade before the Civil War, his ideological DNA dominated secessionist rationale by 1861. Confederate texts such as the state declarations of secession or Alexander Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech” virtually parrot Calhoun’s two-pronged ideology of states’ rights and paternalism. Understanding Calhoun’s centrality to the Confederate ideology provides a valuable foundation to examine white Charlestonians’ reverence for Calhoun and the resulting Black resistance to his commemoration. 

 

Before Calhoun’s body was even interred, a stark contrast between white and Black interpretations of his legacy emerged. Accounts from Calhoun’s funeral detail thousands of white supporters flocking from across the nation to mourn the death of the fabled statesman (Kytle and Roberts 645-655). Black Charlestonians reacted quite differently. Charleston officials opened the ceremony to all members of the city to offer the Black population an opportunity to mourn Calhoun. Instead, African American onlookers reacted with amusement, with white spectators noting “a whole crowd of negroes leaped about the streets, looking quite entertained.” During the procession, the crowd of freedmen could be heard exclaiming “Calhoun was indeed a wicked man, for he wished that we might remain slaves” (Kytle and Roberts 655).White Southerners offered an unwavering endorsement of Calhoun and naively assumed that Black people would want to honor one of slavery’s most ardent supporters. However, Black Charlestonians understood from the beginning that Calhoun embodied a white supremacist racial order and resisted his glorification. 

 

Fundraising to erect a monument to Calhoun in Charleston commenced only a few years following his death. Reflecting a common trend throughout the history of Confederate commemoration, women spearheaded the effort to memorialize Calhoun. In January of 1854, a small group of Charleston women formally organized the Ladies’ Calhoun Monument Association (LCMA).The association’s stated goal was “to aid in the erection, in or near the city of Charleston, of a monument sacred to the memory of John C. Calhoun.” The LCMA’s 1888 publication, A History of the Calhoun Monument at Charleston, provides extensive insight into the rationale and logistics underlying the campaign. While this book was published several decades after the formative years of the LCMA which it aims to recount, the association’s founding member, Mary Amarinthia Snowden, was still serving as the treasurer. Both Snowden’s input and the inclusion of meeting minutes ensure that A History fairly represents the attitudes and actions of early group members (Lamar and LCMA 50).

 

Within the first few pages of A History, the authors affirm Calhoun’s worthiness of commemoration, evidenced by his gentlemanly status and his commitment to state sovereignty. The book’s description of Calhoun’s character immediately evokes images of the disinterested Southern gentleman, typically associated with Robert E. Lee. In the association’s view, through his “strict integrity, magnanimity, and unflinching courage … Mr. Calhoun won the love, gained the confidence, and awakened to a glow the admiration of his people at home and of the world abroad” (Lamar and LCMA 3).In further lauding, the book asserts the legitimacy of Calhoun’s political philosophy and alludes to his strict support of state sovereignty, describing him as “the most distinguished son of the Commonwealth of South Carolina: the most conscientious and profound statesman of the Federal States of the Union: and the broadest and deepest political thinker of his era.” (Lamar and LCMA 5).Taken in totality, the Ladies’ Association paints a picture of Calhoun as an ideal Southern man of saintlike piety, who they believed should serve as a model for South Carolinian posterity. Furthermore, given that the LCMA published this text several decades after the Civil War, the inclusion of the term “Federal States of the Union” rather than simply “the Union” presents as a deliberate word choice and as an endorsement of Calhoun’s theory of state supremacy over the federal government. While labeling Calhoun as the “deepest political thinker of his era” could be reasonably interpreted as an endorsement of his view of slavery as a positive good, the LCMA largely chose to evade discussion of Black bondage. 

 

Even though this section of A History may only tacitly gesture at the slavery question, depicting Calhoun as an exemplar of white Southern gentility clearly served as a crucial goal for the LCMA from its inception. The historical record reveals LCMA members’ careful consideration regarding the fundraising, artistic direction, and selection of a physical location for the monument. The Ladies’ Association saw immediate financial support, amassing $2,500 following their first meeting. Throughout the 1850s, the group appealed to all strata of white society, both within South Carolina and throughout the South, netting contributions from the likes of Charleston concert singers, the South Carolina College, and sympathetic parties in Georgia and Alabama (Lamar and LCMA 5-6).By 1861, the LCMA had amassed $40,000 in its coffers, but the outbreak of the Civil War presented an immense threat to the long-term sustainability of the project (Lamar and LCMA 16). 

 

However, the actions of Mary Amarinthia Snowden would not only preserve the treasury but put the association in an excellent financial position following the war. Born in Charleston, Snowden, a personal friend of Calhoun’s, organized the first meeting of the LCMA in 1854 (Baker). Her philanthropic efforts in Charleston during the Civil War and the postbellum period were exceptional. Following her husband’s death during the war, Snowden worked tirelessly, collecting clothing for Confederate soldiers and tending to the wounded following the Second Battle of Bull Run. Furthermore, she later formed the Ladies’ Memorial Association of Charleston to commemorate the Confederate dead and founded the Home for the Mothers, Widows, and Daughters of Confederate Soldiers. During the Siege of Charleston Harbor, Snowden fled to Columbia where she would serve as a nurse. However, as William Tecumseh Sherman marched to Columbia in February of 1865, Snowden would be forced to flee again. Frightened that Union forces would confiscate the LCMA funds she carried, with the assistance of her sister, she stitched the securities into her skirt and fled the city in the middle of the night, preserving her dream of erecting a monument to Calhoun (Baker). Snowden not only preserved the association’s existing savings but grew them. As treasurer, she carefully invested the initial $40,000 in stocks and securities before the war. As Southern financial institutions reestablished themselves following the Civil War, the Ladies’ Association was compensated handsomely in the form of interest payments on those securities. By 1874, their total savings sat at a sizable $64,000, even though all investments received by the treasury during the war had been in the form of virtually worthless Confederate securities. Snowden’s courage and thrift provided the LCMA a financial basis to refocus their energy from fundraising to the design and construction of the statue (Lamar and LCMA 16). 

 

Both the design and location selected by the LCMA for the statue indicate a desire to project the power of white Southern masculinity and intimidate Charleston’s Black population. The Ladies’ Association organized a committee of men to identify a suitable sculptor. Out of a long list of candidates, the men ultimately selected Albert Harnisch of Philadelphia. Harnisch’s involvement in a pre-existing project to erect a statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond attracted the committee. The initial proposal for the monument certainly did not lack grandeur. The committee recommended the bronze figure “be of heroic size” and include Calhoun’s signature cloak. In his hand, he would hold a scroll reading “Truth, Justice and the Constitution,” representing his integrity. Behind him would stand a grand palmetto tree, representing his enduring allegiance to the great state of South Carolina (Lamar and LCMA 21-24). Although Harnisch attempted to emphasize Calhoun’s “firm and unbending nature” through the model’s rigid form, the women hoped that the model would be even “more imposing.” The final proposal for the statue, as described in Harnisch’s contract, remained largely faithful to the original plan, with the only major change being that four figures representing truth, justice, history, and the Constitution would now surround Calhoun (Lamar and LCMA 26-27). Just as they associated Calhoun with an ideal form of Southern masculinity in their writing, the LCMA hoped the statue would make his saintlike gentility obvious. The heroic, imposing statesman, appearing to have risen from his chair to address a crowd, would send a clear signal to white Southern men: Calhoun should not only be commended but emulated. However, Black Charlestonians would not have described this model as heroic, but intimidating. 

 

The placement of the monument in the Citadel Green, now called Marion Square, sent an unambiguous message of Black subjugation. In 1858, the Ladies’ Association held a ceremony to lay the monument’s cornerstone on the Citadel Green. Before laying the stone, attendees dropped numerous objects in the cavity including one hundred dollars in Continental money, copies of Calhoun’s final speech, and even a lock of his hair (Lamar and LCMA 11-12).Two decades later, as the LCMA reconsolidated, following the chaos of the war; deliberations reaffirmed to them that the Citadel Green offered an ideal location for the Arch Nullifier (Lamar and LCMA 21).While the Ladies’ Association did not present any explicit reason for the selection of the Citadel Green, a brief survey of the surrounding area reveals their motivations. The park was adjacent to an area known as the Neck, which contained a majority of the city’s freedmen, the Citadel arsenal (which was used to monitor the city’s enslaved Black people following Denmark Vesey’s failed slave revolt of 1822), and Mother Emanuel church, which Vesey worked to found (Kytle and Roberts 656). Positioning Calhoun in the center of the Citadel Green mocked Black Charlestonians, reminding them where they belonged within Charleston’s white supremacist racial order: at the bottom. Mamie Garvin Fields, a Black Charlestonian activist and teacher, encapsulated Black sentiment, stating, “I believe white people were talking to us about Jim Crow through the statue.” Every day, Black children would be forced to walk by the towering Calhoun reminding them that “you may not be a slave, but I am back to see you stay in your place” (Kytle and Roberts 656-660). Ultimately, the story of the LCMA illuminates the centrality of Southern women in the effort to entrench white political power and intimidate Black people through the memorialization of Confederate leaders.

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Unveiling the Monument 

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In the culmination of three decades of toil and meticulous planning, the LCMA finally unveiled the statue on April 26, 1887. Set to be the most elaborate ceremony in the history of Charleston, newspapers painted a glorious picture of the festivities. The front page of the Charleston-based News and Courier read “Robed in sunshine, redolent with the varied perfumes of her numerous gardens fanned hither and thither by exhilarating breezes from the sea, Charleston, resting in the lap of her encircling bay, smiled a most gracious welcome to her guests on Calhoun Day” (Lamar and LCMA 41).Thousands of visitors poured into Charleston from across the country, “including a host of distinguished men from all parts of the South.” Around noon, 2,500 soldiers and many more citizens began their procession to the Citadel Green. Sources suggest 15,000 to 20,000 people lined the parade route. Described as the longest procession “ever seen in Charleston,” reporters noted the enthusiasm of the crowd as “they cried out in one breath for Calhoun” (“Tribute to Calhoun”). Dozens of carriages followed the soldiers in the procession, carrying distinguished statesmen from across the South. The now elderly Mary Amarinthia Snowden, undoubtedly elated to show the public the fruition of her decades of sacrifice, occupied one of these carriages (Lamar and LCMA 50). After the procession arrived at the stage and opening remarks were made, a group of Calhoun’s descendants unveiled the statue, as the accompanying band played “Dixie,” to the assembly that had accumulated in the park (“Tribute to Calhoun”). A History describes a thunderous roar from the crowd “succeeded by a deep silence” as the crowd demonstrated deference in the presence of the bronzed statesman (Lamar and LCMA 58). Flanked by palmetto trees and a grand American flag, Secretary of the Interior Lucius Q.C. Lamar would give the oration. 

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Lamar, born and raised on his family’s 900-acre plantation in Putnam County, Georgia, had deep ties to both the Confederacy and anti-Black Reconstruction politics (Rogers). In 1861, while serving in the House of Representatives, he helped draft the Mississippi Ordinance of Secession, a document that mirrored Calhoun’s Constitutional compact theory. During the war, Lamar initially worked on the staff of General James Longstreet and then served as commissioner to Russia by appointment of Jefferson Davis. Following the war, Lamar returned to the House of Representatives and served as a leader of the Mississippi Democratic Party, which entailed absolute opposition to Black suffrage and close allegiance to the Klu Klux Klan. Lamar helped to cripple Reconstruction measures in Mississippi as he led campaigns to intimidate Black voters in 1875 (Domby).Like Calhoun, he rationalized his racial attitudes through the invocation of hierarchical, paternalist ideology, claiming “the supremacy of the unconquered and unconquerable Saxon race” (Rogers). A man as committed to white supremacist terror as Lucius Lamar made for a fitting orator at the unveiling of Calhoun’s monument. 

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If erecting the statue near Charleston’s Black neighborhoods did not plainly demonstrate the monument’s purpose of racial intimidation, then Lamar’s oration, in which he endorses Calhoun’s gentility and view of slavery as a positive good, offers even more compelling evidence. Lamar emphasizes the nobility of Calhoun’s planter status. In Calhoun, he saw qualities of patience, industry, and firmness which made for the ideal Southern master. In Lamar’s view, these qualities allowed the planter to “take a race of untamed savages … and out of such a people to make the finest body of agricultural and domestic laborers that the world has ever seen; and, indeed, to elevate them … into the charmed circle of American freedom, and to be clothed with the rights and duties of American citizenship” (Lamar 4). While the LCMA generally avoided the issue of slavery in their commemoration of Calhoun, electing to exclude any reference to the peculiar institution from the monument, Lucius Lamar adopted an alternative approach. Instead, he interpreted the statue as an endorsement of Calhoun’s belief in “the ameliorating and humanizing tendencies [slavery] introduced into the life of the African” (Lamar 43). 

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In regards to Lamar’s narrative of Black progress facilitated by the guidance of white masters, his conduct throughout the Reconstruction period makes his interpretation laughable. Lamar spent almost two decades endorsing white supremacist terrorist violence and the intimidation of African American voters, yet simultaneously credited the white man for Black ascension into the voting pool. While the lack of any reference to slavery or white racial supremacy on the statue, an omission that was typical for Confederate memorials of the era, allowed some room for the obscuration of the LCMA’s racial motives, their selection of the secessionist, Klan-supporting Lamar as the ceremony’s orator does not (Kytle and Roberts 656-657). 

 

The statue that Lamar gave his oration in front of greatly differed from the statue that overlooked Mother Emanuel on the day of the Charleston church shooting a century and a half later. In the decade following Calhoun day, criticisms of the statue’s aesthetic merit by white Charlestonians coupled with Black resistance against Calhoun’s glorification prompted an effort to reimagine the monument. After the splendor of the 1887 unveiling ceremony, Charleston’s residents, both white and Black, could more carefully examine the imposing statesman (Kytle and Roberts 658). Quickly, white Charlestonians made numerous criticisms of the artistic merit of the monument and concluded it insulted rather than honored Calhoun’s legacy. The statue’s hands appeared malformed, the wardrobe was historically inaccurate, and Calhoun’s entire body appeared disproportionate. By the time of the unveiling, Harnisch had only completed one of the four allegorical characters intended to encircle Calhoun. However, the female character that Harnisch did complete even received criticism, with one Charleston resident, Henry S. Holmes, calling her a “fearful hag.” Black Charlestonians mocked the display by labeling the rounded female figurine “Mis’ Calhoun.” Holmes reflected the view of many Charlestonian residents, declaring the memorial a “swindle, monstrosity, and frightful sight.” Only a few years after the statue’s erection, the LCMA made plans to redo the statue. While the association cited aesthetic issues as the reason for their decision, “local black memory places the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of African Americans who sought to damage the monument” (Kytle and Roberts 658-660). 

 

From the day of its unveiling, Black Charlestonians targeted the statue. While Black mockery of Calhoun’s grotesque figure and “Mis’ Calhoun” certainly enraged white residents, physical attacks against the monument served as the most effective form of resistance. Mamie Fields recounted Black Charlestonians using rocks or sticks “to deface the monument––scratch up the coat, break the watch chain, try to knock off the nose” (Kytle and Roberts 658-660). As early as 1894, newspapers reported plans for a new monument, with a significantly taller pedestal, to be designed by New York sculptor John Massey Rhind (“In Memory of Calhoun”). While these accounts cited the unsatisfactory artistic merit of the original monument as the motivating factor behind the remodeling, Fields held that Black Charlestonians had “beat up John C. Calhoun so badly that the whites had to come back and put him way up high, so we couldn’t get to him.” (Kytle and Roberts 660). 

 

While limited historical evidence exists to corroborate the claim that “the large column was primarily a preventative measure,” vandalism of Marion Square and the monument itself clearly troubled city officials. Graffiti and “rough usage” of the city’s parks, particularly Marion Square, was commonplace throughout the early 1890s.In 1894, Marion Square commissioners hired “a keeper of the Square” in response to continued “nuisances and depredations” (Kytle and Roberts 660-661).Two years later, the LCMA unveiled the new monument to “little fanfare” as the ladies were “apparently embarrassed at the failure surrounding the first statute” (Waters).If the primary intention of this new monument truly was the prevention of vandalism, then it marked a second failure for the LCMA as the heightened pedestal did not mitigate, and if anything emboldened, attacks against Calhoun. 

 

Shortly after the installation of the second monument, the Marion Square commissioners implemented regulations that outlawed marking, cutting, or throwing projectiles at the statue. They also requested increased police presence in the park at night. Despite the commission's numerous preventative measures, Black Charlestonians continued their assault on the monuments. Commission reports and interviews indicate that “goats, boys, and night prowlers” continued to throw rocks at the statue for decades. In 1915, the commissioners requested the installment of two lights next to the monument to “stop the practice of small boys throwing pebbles at the bronze tablets,” but by 1922, these lights also became a target (Kytle and Roberts 661).While this vandalism never amounted to an organized campaign against Calhoun, highlighting Black Charlestonians’ long-standing opposition to the monument provided legitimacy to future efforts to remove the monument. 

 

The Marion Square Commission introduced these tightened restrictions against the backdrop of white violence. On May 10, 1919, white sailors unleashed an eruption of bloodshed in the predominantly Black neighborhoods of the Neck, located next to Marion Square (Butler).While reports of the exact cause of the rioting vary, the Navy’s investigation identified an encounter between two white soldiers and a Black man named Isaiah Doctor, in which Doctor failed to show deference to the soldiers when passing them on the sidewalk, as the catalyst of the chaos. After the purported slight, the soldiers followed Doctor, hurling racial epithets, prompting the vulnerable Black man to hurl a brick at them. A mob quickly formed and chased Doctor into an alley forcing him to fire his gun in the air so they would disperse. This incident only marked the beginning of the violence as rumors swept through the city that a Black man had shot at white sailors. The sailors hunted down Doctor, shooting him in his backyard, before turning their rage towards the rest of the Neck. The mob killed five more people, injured dozens, and destroyed numerous Black businesses in a single night. 

 

In one incident, a mob committed violence against unsuspecting Black people directly under the bronzed Calhoun’s approving gaze. Outside of Marion Square, soldiers overtook a streetcar then proceeded to drag a Black man off the trolley, beat him in the street, and then shoot him. In the end, the racially charged Charleston Riot of 1919 marked the worst violence in the city since the Civil War (Butler). All of the violence occurred within a few blocks of a monument to South Carolina’s most beloved white supremacist. The Marion Square Commission’s heightened defense of the Calhoun monument coinciding with an avalanche of racial violence mirrors a common trend in Confederate commemoration. The pairing of Confederate memorialization and the public lynching of African Americans represented a favorite strategy of white Southerners to entrench their power. While physiological and physical terrorism against Black Charlestonians characterized the early history of the Calhoun monument, their struggle would not be in vain as their courageous resistance laid a foundation for the eventual removal of the statue.

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Toppling a Southern Icon 

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Unsurprisingly, Black Charlestonians despised the Calhoun monument from the day of its erection, rightfully publicizing their disdain through their mockery and physical destruction of the statue. Still, Calhoun menacingly overlooked the Neck for over a century, reminding African Americans to “stay in your place.” In addition to unrelenting Black resistance, the unseating of Calhoun from his lofty perch would require institutional support. In 2015, the Mother Emanuel massacre and the murder of a Black motorist by the North Charleston police rocked the city to its core, generating wide calls for an audit of the city’s racial record (Taylor). These tragedies contoured the city’s political landscape, providing an opportunity to confront the city’s white supremacist history with immense public support. The colossal John C. Calhoun, both in memory and effigy, represented the most visible symbol of that painful history. At the end of that year, the people of Charleston would elect John Tecklenburg as their new mayor, marking the beginning of the end for Calhoun. 

 

In November of 2017, Tecklenburg requested that the Charleston History Commission revise historical markers throughout the city, as well as consider the addition of new monuments (“African American monument”). Tecklenburg’s list of potential new monuments included a proposal to erect a statue of the First South Carolina Volunteers, escaped slaves who returned to the South to fight as Union soldiers at the risk of immediate execution if captured. This plan to honor the bravery of African American Union soldiers illuminated a narrative of Black resistance that had long been buried by the Lost Cause’s monopoly on Civil War memory. Of course, Tecklenburg’s proposal to add a plaque to Calhoun’s statue, which would detail the statesman’s positive views of slavery and white supremacy created the most controversy (“African American monument”). The plaque’s proposed verbiage described the statue as a “relic of the crime against humanity” and asserted that Calhoun’s “political career was defined by his support of race-based slavery” (“Calhoun statue plaque”).While any honest history, including Calhoun’s own writings, would confirm the veracity of the plaque, many Charlestonians were not receptive to the mayor’s proposal. 

 

In early 2018, the Charleston City Council debated the plaque’s future at a public meeting (“Plaque in limbo”). At the meeting, a group of white Charlestonians took issue with the number of times the plaque mentioned Calhoun’s views on race, arguing that “it should not be a pro-Calhoun statement or an anti-Calhoun statement, it should be a historical statement.” While the suggestion that labeling Calhoun as a supporter of race-based slavery was a statement of opinion rather than historical fact is risible, the council members ultimately could not agree on the plaque’s language and voted to defer the issue to a future session. However, the issue would never be revisited as the committee originally tasked to design the plaque eventually disbanded (“Plaque in limbo”). 

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While John Tecklenburg’s plan to provide context to the monument ultimately failed, his second attempt to challenge Calhoun’s glorification would prove more successful. Three years later, amidst a summer of national racial reckoning prompted by the murder of George Floyd, Tecklenburg would not call for a plaque, but rather the removal of the entire monument (Rivera et al). On the fifth anniversary of the Charleston church shooting, the mayor held a press conference in Marion Square to announce that he would send a resolution to the Charleston City Council requesting the relocation of the statue to a museum. This announcement came the day after the Charleston chapter of the NAACP and members of the South Carolina General Assembly held their own press conference in the park calling for the statue’s removal (Simmons and Phillips). While South Carolina’s Heritage Act outlaws the removal of any Confederate war-related memorials in the state, Tecklenburg argued that the city had complete authority to remove the statue as Calhoun died before the Civil War and therefore the monument contained no mention of the conflict. Following the press conference, protesters painted phrases such as “BLM” and “Take it down” on the base of the monument, carrying on a long tradition of vandalism against the statue (Rivera et al). 

 

The Charleston City Council proved more cooperative a second time around, as a week after Tecklenburg’s press conference, they voted unanimously to remove the statue (Hobbs et al). Less than 24 hours later, in the early hours of June 23, 2020, a crew began the process of dislodging the “Cast-Iron Man” from his perch. Hundreds of people gathered in the pitch dark to witness Calhoun's fall from grace. The removal would take over seventeen hours, significantly longer than city officials expected, due to an unexpected bronze rod embedded in the granite cylinder. As the workers hammered away at the stubborn rod, Black Charlestonians patiently waiting outside of Marion Square offered deeply moving commentary demonstrating the gravity of the historic moment. Cheryl Newman-Whaley, a fifth-generation Charleston native, expressed both relief and melancholy. She recounted having to walk by the monument as a young girl and then having to explain to her own children who Calhoun was. While satisfied with the removal effort, Newman-Whaley could not help but be saddened by the thought that Calhoun potentially owned her direct ancestors as slaves. Tony Simmons, a relative of two Mother Emanuel shooting victims, said that no single event could fully heal the pain his family and the greater Black community had endured, but still described Calhoun’s removal as cathartic. 

 

As a crane lifted the statue off the column and lowered Calhoun to the earth, the crowd erupted in cheers. Dozens of onlookers gathered around the chain-link fence enclosing the park to get a final look at the fallen statesman. Fittingly, after Calhoun spent a century and a half sitting high above Marion Square, intimidating Black residents, Charlestonians looked down to see him for the last time. Amidst celebratory laughter and hugs, John Tecklenburg, in reference to the unexpectedly lengthy removal, provided a fitting ending to the Calhoun saga declaring “Like racism, he was deeply rooted in there.” After a century-long struggle, justice finally prevailed (Hobbs et al). 

 

Today, the John C. Calhoun monument remains unclaimed. While Tecklenburg planned for the relocation of the statue to a museum, the statue remains in an undisclosed warehouse after multiple plans to find Calhoun a new home fell through (Brams and Powers).While only a small step on a long road to racial recovery in America, the removal of Calhoun represents a monumental victory in the struggle against Confederate and white supremacist glorification. Calhoun and the Confederacy still have defenders in all corners of the country arguing that the removal of monuments “erases history.” Entertaining these types of vapid historical arguments can be draining, but they must be addressed. While these Confederate sympathizers fail to recognize the difference between historical record keeping and commemoration, Lost Cause proponents clearly recognize the weight statues hold. The individuals who receive statues reflect the values of the society that selected them for commemoration. To counter this tiresome Lost Cause argument, those in opposition to Confederate glorification should not only provide the names of individuals undeserving of their present monuments, but also the hidden figures of history deserving of recognition. In fact, several Charlestonians, as they watched Calhoun’s removal, offered excellent suggestions: Denmark Vesey, Robert Smalls, and the First South Carolina Volunteers. Pastor Bernard Brown suggested that the nine victims of the Mother Emanuel shooting take Calhoun’s place atop the column (Hobbs et al). 

 

While this particular plan might not come to fruition, Pastor Brown will receive his wish of commemoration for the Emanuel Nine. The Emanuel Nine Memorial Foundation plans to install a memorial to the victims on the church grounds, complete with a courtyard, garden, and contemplation basin (Walton). Ten years after Dylann Roof massacred Black churchgoers under Calhoun’s approving gaze, Calhoun is now gone and a memorial bearing the names of the Emanuel Nine will sit directly next to Marion Square, reminding the city of Charleston how far it has come.