Sunday Focus: Excluding Semmes?

The statue of Semmes in Mobile, threatened with destruction.

     I blame it on the fact that I was working on a documentary about the CSS Alabama late in my eleven years at APT.

     That's why the statue of her captain, Raphael Semmes, never came to mind in all of this talk about dismantling Confederate Memorials and destroying statues.
     Semmes was about as Confederate as you can get. An Admiral in the CSS Navy, A General in the CSS Army. Probably the only man to hold such high rank in both services.
    The student newspaper at The University of South Alabama--The Vanguard---reports that the group Anonymous has threatened to destroy the Semmes statue in Mobile:

“Anonymous” announced their plans to tear down several Confederate statues across

Semmes Statue in Mobile

the country, including the statue of Admiral Semmes on Aug. 18 at 6 p.m. EST as part of what they called a Day of Denouncement. However, no one showed up to tear the statue down....."

Kudos to the students for getting the story. Theirs is the only place I saw it reported.

Bob Corley working on lighting at the Museum of Mobile.

     APT's Bob Corley and I were deep into research and had actually done one significant interview when the rug was pulled out from under us.
     Another example of my blinders when it comes to Semmes is the fact that I talked with Bob last week and we talked about lots of stuff, but not a word about the onslaught of monument destruction.
     Did I admire Semmes? No, but I thought his story was worth telling.

Some of the CSS Alabama books I collected for the project.

    
     Not that there weren't a ton of books about the CSS Alabama. But the only documentaries we found were not especially good. We felt they missed the drama involved.

     But now I wonder if I contributed to the malaise the statues caused for people of color.

     Was I blind, or blindsided during that time that I researched Semmes, who denied that slavery was a root cause of the Civil War? I'm not sure. But I do know that the men and women who died in the war on both sides can be remembered without erecting statues to the men who led them into the war, and into treason against the United States.

[Sunday Focus is a longstanding feature of www.timlennox.com, celebrating ten years online in the Fall.]