by Larry Chowning –
The Middlesex County Board of Supervisors has been asked by a local NAACP member to remove the 1910 Daughters of the Confederacy monument on the courthouse green, along with other items associated with the Confederacy inside the courthouse.
During public comment at the supervisors virtual Zoom meeting on Tuesday, July 7, Dawn Moore, who said she was representing the Middlesex Branch of the NAACP, or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called into the meeting and said, “Due to the pandemic and the crisis that’s going around, we call for the board to discuss and make the decision to remove the Confederate monuments from the courthouse.”
Throughout the country and world, those associated with the Black Lives Matter movement and others have been calling for removal of statues, monuments and flags associated with the Civil War era and statues of other historical figures that they assert symbolize a racist history.
The movement inspired by the death of George Floyd, who was killed in Minneapolis, Minn. in May by a white policeman, has been successful in the removal of the Stonewall Jackson, Matthew Fontaine Maury, and other monuments in Richmond, and in changing of the Mississippi state flag because of the Confederate battle flag that was a part of the state flag’s design.
The historic Middlesex County Courthouse building and grounds has several items associated with the 1861-1865 Civil War era. The granite monument on the southwest corner of the courthouse green was erected by the Middlesex Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy in honor of their fathers and grandfathers who fought in the Civil War. A dedication of the monument was July 4, 1910. It is believed Middlesex County has not had an active Daughters of the Confederacy chapter in a number of years.
At the same time the local branch had a marble slab embossed with Confederate battle flags mounted on the wall of the upstairs historic courtroom. The slab is a flat piece of marble that has been embossed. Underneath the slab is a print hanging on the wall of Gen. Robert E. Lee and his generals.
There are three portraits of Confederate soldiers in uniform hanging on the walls. Col. William Steptoe Christian was the highest ranking officer from Middlesex in the Confederate army. A primitive portrait of William X. Smith in uniform hangs on the wall. Smith was shot and killed at the Battle of Chancellorsville. There is also a portrait of Capt. Elliott Muse Healy hanging. Healy was killed leading a charge at the Second Battle of Bull Run.
Most of the portraits hanging on the wall represent white males who lived in the Civil War- and post-Civil War era and most all were likely associated with the Southern case to promote and maintain the institution of slavery, according to NAACP reps.
However, the portrait of Joseph Allen Bristow is a contrast in thought. Bristow, a sergeant in the Southern army, survived the war and after the war opened a general merchandise store in Stormont. In 1902 he was elected on the Republican ticket to represent Essex and Middlesex counties in the state’s 1902 Constitutional Convention.
The 1902 Convention established “Jim Crow” laws requiring a poll tax and passing a literacy test to vote. The laws were designed to prevent blacks from having the right to vote.
On April 4,1902 by 67 to 28 votes, Virginia’s “Jim Crow” laws were approved. Bristow voted against “Jim Crow” and was a forerunner in an early movement to stop unjust and unfair laws which shifted the power of governing throughout Virginia to a small group of powerful white men.
Assistant Middlesex County Administrator Betty Muncy said this week in an email the county has not received “any (official) correspondence from the NAACP” as to what Confederate items they want removed from the courthouse.
