DAVID: It’s 2024. And I’m back on Main Street next to the courthouse lawn. Several years have passed since events in the last episode—and so much has happened. Russia invaded Ukraine. Inflation surged. Queen Elizabeth died. Here in Jessamine County, the big news is that the Dollar General in Wilmore, which was formerly a dry town, now sells beer. And in case you’re wondering . . . the front lawn of the courthouse in Nicholasville—what’s in front of me right now—looks a little bit different. There was a huge windstorm last year. It took out the biggest tree . . . an enormous sugar maple that shaded the lawn . . . and shaded the Confederate statue from this hot Kentucky sun. But the statue itself? . . . It’s still here. Jessamine County’s statue still stands. DAVID: In this final episode I make one last sweep through the county, revisiting sites, checking up on characters, and chronicling what has happened. Or more to the point, what hasn’t happened. . . . I also try to understand why. How is it possible, a full century and a half after the Civil War, that this statue is still standing—a statue that honors soldiers who fought to enslave Black people? The past is never dead. It’s not even past. This is “Rebel on Main.” I’m your host David Swartz. Episode 7: “Change Is Gonna Come.” PART ONE: THE STATUE STILL STANDS DAVID: Before heading out, I think back to all the wildly different opinions I’ve heard on what to do with this statue. Take a listen to some of the recordings I’ve collected. JENNA: I’ve stated clearly on the petition that we wanted it destroyed. DAVID: That’s Jenna Sparks. PERRY: Take it down. Take it down. Make a new day. Make our own history. DAVID: That’s Perry, a young Black man who graduated from East Jessamine High School. RADFORD: This is where I am with it. DAVID: This is Pastor Moses. He was hoping for a supernatural intervention. RADFORD: Just praying for the Lord to bring a strong wind through Nicholasville and just hit the statue. That’s all I want. That’s all I want him to hit—just the statue. To show Jessamine County that he’s in charge. DAVID: Not surprisingly, participants at the Back the Blue rally disagreed. DAVID: There’s a Confederate statue over there. What do you think should be done with it? WOMAN: Absolutely nothing. History is history. You can’t rewrite it. All you can do is learn from it and move forward. DAVID: In an attempt to get the pulse of the general public, I had interviewed dozens and dozens of people about the statue as we stood beside it. About 80 percent of them opposed its removal. And a big chunk of that 80 percent, even some who participated in the Black Lives Matter protest, used the refrain of quote “not erasing history.” Like this guy who carried a sign that read, “I can’t breathe.” MAN: “Well, we are in the South, so [chuckle]. That’s history, and history is history, so.” DAVID: Even the liberals weren’t sure they wanted to “erase history.” Except for quite a few of the young people. At the end of a spring semester course I taught called “War in American Memory,” I asked a group of students what they thought should happen to the statue. They clearly didn’t feel the political and financial constraints of the magistrates, the six men overseeing county operations. . . . Because they proposed blowing up the statue . . . with dynamite . . . as a way of recreating the experience of war. And then digging a tunnel under the courthouse lawn that citizens could walk through. Here’s a clip from their presentation: STUDENT: You enter into an experience that you don’t have any control over. You walk in and you don’t have control over the light, you don’t have control over how long the tunnel is. It becomes like a very claustrophobic space, that you just have no choice but to go through. And so we wanted to kind of like recreate the experience that soldiers go through during war, where they’re just kind of put into a situation that has really not much to do with them as individuals, but instead, is like a communal experience that they have to walk through for the sake of the country. DAVID: As unfeasible as my student’s irreverent proposal to blow up the statue was, I took it as thoughtful and profound. Especially after she ended with a meditation on the interpretive nature of memorialization. STUDENT: And then when you go through and get to the other side, you see the nature that surrounds you from a different perspective, because you’ve literally moved. DAVID: Father Justin, the local Orthodox priest, offered an idea he had seen abroad. JUSTIN: So one of my favorite places to go in Moscow is the Soviet Statuary Park. DAVID: It’s a park full of fallen statues. There are dozens of mutilated busts, many pulled down by protesters in 1991. Among them are statues of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet revolutionary and leader. JUSTIN: Stalin was totally recontextualized. And they put up barbed wire around it, and filled in stones that looked like bones all around it. DAVID: This strategy effectively disenchants these glorious statues. Seeing them side by side shows how they were used by an authoritarian regime to indoctrinate its citizens. JUSTIN: So, you know, I don’t think it would happen in this case . . . DAVID: He’s referring now . . . to our statue. But the Russian case is a good example of the endless ideas circulating in the county. Blow it up. Keep it there. Keep it there but change something about it. One local politician wanted to change its identity by converting it back to the Union soldier it was in the beginning—all the way back in 1896. Others wanted to remove the Lost Cause language on the pedestal and install an informational panel that contextualized the statue. Still others wanted to strip all identity from the statue. It could honor all soldiers from everywhere from all times. This, said one former magistrate, was the best way to remember the past accurately. DAVID: All right, what’s your name? GEORGE: George Dean. DAVID: This is a conversation from the Black Lives Matter protests back in 2020. George was not a participant. He was standing behind the crowds and the statue, taking it all in. He looked a little shellshocked, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. GEORGE: My opinion is that it should not be removed. I personally had ancestors that fought on both sides of the war. DAVID: George’s Civil War ancestry is kind of amazing. On the Confederate side, he had two great uncles who rode with Bennett Young. Young, you’ll remember, was that brash raider who invaded Vermont from Canada in 1864—and then dedicated the Confederate statue three decades later. In the 1920s George’s grandmother was president of the Kentucky division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. So he’s got some real rebel heritage. But that’s not all. GEORGE: On the other side, my great-grandfather lived out in the lower part of the county. He joined the Union Army. DAVID: And fought for General Sherman in the Atlanta campaign. GEORGE: I also had a great-grandfather from Eastern Kentucky who joined the Union Army. He served at Camp Nelson. DAVID: After he resigned his commission, Confederate guerrillas found him at home and shot him dead on his front porch. GEORGE: So there’s atrocities on both sides, right and wrong on both sides. DAVID: George’s pedigree clearly informs his opinion on Civil War memorials. He was instrumental in preserving Camp Nelson National Monument, and now he’s defending the statue. He wants more history, not less. GEORGE: I think this statue is totally appropriate to be here. There needs to be some changes to it, for sure, no doubt. If you change it and repurpose that statue, it’d be totally appropriate. It would make Jessamine County an example for other counties throughout the state. DAVID: What do you mean by repurpose? So would it become a common soldier for both sides? GEORGE: Just dedicate it to the memory of all those who fought for their beliefs during the Civil War regardless of color or creed. DAVID: To me, it made some sense to change the statue’s identity. After all, it had already been done once. George too knew of the statue’s original conversion from Union to Confederate. GEORGE: If you look at his ammo pouch in the back, it’s got “C.S.” on it. That was originally “U.S.” The people at the foundry before they brought the statue down here, they were able to change that U to a C. They also changed that belt buckle from “U.S.” to “C.S.” So he’s still a Union soldier. DAVID: Especially the hat. GEORGE: Yes, the kepi hat. Back to my grandmother . . . she and her aunt, they all said, “That’s a damn Yankee!” I grew up right there on First Street in their home, spent many days there. I heard that I don’t know how many times. DAVID: A damn Yankee. Even the generation that put it up knew that the statue was bad history. And it remains woefully incomplete. It doesn’t represent the Union side. And it certainly doesn’t represent the Black experience during the Civil War. Could remaking it yet again work—this time into a statue for all sides? Perhaps so. It would almost perfectly embody George’s own heritage—and the county’s and state’s heritage too. Jessamine County was evenly divided in the Civil War, and Kentucky was a border state. George’s solution also would fit the county’s sensibilities now. Most people here don’t view Camp Nelson and the statue as rivals. They want to champion both. That’s the perspective of both George and Judge-Executive David West, who also has been a long-time booster of Camp Nelson. In fact, the judge floated George’s idea in the local newspaper. It quoted him as saying, “Let’s repurpose it. . . . Let’s take the Confederacy off of it. . . . Make it a tribute to all men and women of Jessamine County who served. Make it healing instead of divisive.” I expected that this “both sides” proposal would get political traction. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the notion of transforming the statue and adding a contextual plaque riled people up even more. The idea proved much more divisive than healing. BOB: We’ve got these historical markers everywhere. DAVID: This is Bob Barney. BOB: We’ll put one of those next to the statue and explain what it is you think needs to be explained. DAVID: As we sat inside his white-pillared house, still festooned with Trump banners in 2020, he described a recent conversation he had had with Judge-Executive David West. BOB: But David, let me give you a little advice before you pay the money to have it put on a plaque. Take the wording and make it public and give people an opportunity to respond to it. Because what you’re going to find, David, when you do that is it’s not going to make everybody happy. You’re going to have one side wants more, and the other side wants less. And there’s going to be a great debate about what should such a plaque say. I think you’re going to find that that’s not your solution. It’s politically perilous. Some people feel, I mean, really strongly. You’ve talked to Moses, and you know how strongly he feels it needs to go. You know, it’s a symbolism of white supremacy. DAVID: Bob called it exactly right. Here’s how Pastor Moses described that conversation with the judge. RADFORD: But what if we make a plaque? I said, “David, I told you. That ain’t gonna work for me.” DAVID: That, he said, would still be praising those who were in favor of slavery, white supremacy, and Jim Crow. RADFORD: No, we will not be satisfied. That’s like putting a Band-Aid on a sore. Let’s remove it. Take it to the cemetery. DAVID: The long-promised committee—the one convened by Judge West—concurred. This solution would commemorate the deaths of Confederate soldiers—but not celebrate their cause. RADFORD: We finally met. David and Gates. DAVID: Judge David West and Robert Gates, the pastor down at Camp Nelson. RADFORD: And a guy named Jason. I can’t think of his last name. And all three of us saying remove it. DAVID: But the judge, perhaps not liking their advice, never reconvened the committee. Pastor Moses blamed statue-defenders like Bob Barney. RADFORD: Guys like that—probably the ones that have been in the judge’s face. That threaten him. Dare him to move it. DAVID: He also worried about the demographic strength of the other side. RADFORD: My thinking is—which could be wrong—that he knows Jessamine County. He knows how white Jessamine County is, how antiblack it is or any other nationality. He knows that. And he does not want to cause a problem to keep folks from going to blows. DAVID: In other words, maybe Judge West was trying to prevent violence. That was something Pastor Moses could appreciate. RADFORD: That statue ain’t worth me getting hurt over—or my family. That statue represent folk who fought in the war. They all dead. If they were saved, they went to heaven. If they wasn’t saved, they went to hell. And I be crazy if I’m gonna lose some blood over a statue. It ain’t worth it to me. DAVID: But he also suspected that avoiding violence wasn’t the only thing at work. RADFORD: Honestly, I believe that holding off this long is really trying to avoid the issue. Don’t want to create any more problems in Jessamine County. Reelection is coming up. . . . DAVID: I kind of felt for Judge West. The pressure on him was tremendous as he tried to manage a volatile situation. He showed up at all the protests and rallies. He massaged strong personalities and had difficult one-on-one conversations. And understandably, he wanted to get reelected. There seemed to be no political way forward. If Pastor Moses is right, the judge’s strategy was to stall. It worked. Jenna’s ambitious goal of 3,000 signatures on her antistatue petition fell short, petering out at around 500. After she hand-delivered the sheaf of signatures to his courthouse office in August 2020, Judge West did not reply. When she sent a follow-up note five months later, he did respond, again promising a future discussion—but only after social distancing rules ended, when the courtroom could hold more than twelve people. The pandemic, which initially gave oxygen to the protests, now suffocated them. But even after Covid shots arrived in the county, the conversation still didn’t happen. And that sign. That temporary sign, which said that Jessamine County was addressing options so the statue will reflect values of justice and unity. Sometime in late 2021, that sign quietly disappeared. Soon after, I got my first formal interview with the judge. As we sat on the second floor of the courthouse overlooking the statue, David West talked about what he wished would happen. WEST: People do need to see through the eyes of an African American what that looks like. Let’s push that narrative. We don’t believe that what the Confederacy fought for was a great cause. And we can state our values today, which is inclusiveness, love for our fellow citizen and all the wishes for prosperity. I’ve been a proponent to anybody who’s talked to me that we need to make a change. Whether that change is a modification of the statue or the removal, I’d love for that to be the will of the people. DAVID: But he was also a realist. The will of the people did not appear to be on his side. WEST: So I would like to toss the ball back to the other side of the net. If this is such a just cause, let’s begin a campaign of education and information. And let’s not change hearts by battle. Let’s change hearts by what’s right, by what’s healing, by what’s helpful. DAVID: He bristled at my suggestion that he was suffocating debate. And he was getting impatient with opponents of the statue, who from his perspective, sometimes seemed like obstructionists. WEST: I’ve met with several people, and solutions are all over the table: from grind it up to move it to Maple Grove Cemetery to change it to put a plaque out. DAVID: I was glad he didn’t know about my student’s proposal to blow it up! WEST: There doesn’t even seem to be any agreement amongst those that are offended by the statue. So I met with a minister last month, and I said, “What does your group want us to do? What’s your group’s recommendation?” And it was all over the place. There’s not a consensus. If we were to use your poll . . . DAVID: He’s talking about my own informal survey conducted by the statue. WEST: . . . we do nothing. DAVID: Not even put a plaque up? WEST: I’m all for it. I’ve proposed that and been shot down. DAVID: By the end of our interview, he seemed equal parts resigned, tired, and annoyed. WEST: So do I concentrate on an issue that can be emotionally charged? Or do I concentrate on getting broadband to every member of our community. There is only so much time in a day. And there are multiple issues. Not that this isn’t relevant, not that this isn’t significant. But so many things pull our attention. DAVID: And so, two full years after protests over the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, this statue in the heart of the Bluegrass remained standing, its Confederate identity still intact, its rebel eyes still staring defiantly toward the north. PART TWO: TIRED OF PASSING IT BY DAVID: Until suddenly, the statue seemed vulnerable again. It all began at the local MLK observances in 2023. [singing] As usual, a host of politicians made speeches. Including Judge West. WEST: Boy, I see smiles on faces, and isn’t that good? We’re not where we need to be. But we are headed where we should be. [Amens] DAVID: There was a lot of singing. SINGER: It’s been a long time comin’. But I know change gonna come. DAVID: And there was a lot of praying. BENEDICTION: Early in the morning when the sun rises, God, one day, you’re gonna speak, “Peace be still!” to this world. You’re gonna speak to us, and we gonna see each other not as who we are now, but we gonna see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. We gonna hold one another and greet one another. We all gonna sing thank you Lord that it came true. That as we sing “We shall overcome,” we did overcome through the blessed blood of the Lamb of Jesus Christ. And we give you praise and honor and glory and majesty. In the mighty name of Jesus, the Christ of the living God. And the people of God said amen. Praise God. [music and crowd noise] DAVID: And then we all marched from the church to the courthouse. Pastor Moses says that what he did next was not premeditated. Perhaps the singing inspired him. Perhaps it was the rousing benediction. Or perhaps it was passing by the statue on the way inside. DAVID: This is a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of January, the day after . . . CASONDRA: The day after Martin Luther King, Jr., Day!! DAVID: So I was at all of the—well not all—of the festivities yesterday. I missed the most important part. And so I missed what happened having to do with the statue. So what’s your name? CASONDRA: I’m Casondra Radford. DAVID: And what do you do? CASONDRA: I’m a teacher here in Jessamine County. DAVID: One of your claims to fame is who you’re related to. . . . CASONDRA: My daddy’s Moses Radford. The community’s pastor. DAVID: So tell me what happened in the courtroom at the Jessamine County courthouse. CASONDRA: He got up to speak, and he was supposed to be just kind of summing up MLK Day and just kind of offering a prayer or what have you. And he basically just said the next time that we walk to this courthouse marching for MLK Day, I don’t want to pass by that statue that’s been in front of the building for so long. It should have already come down. And the history behind it is not something that we are marching for. We are marching against that. We want justice. And part of that justice is to remove the statue, take it from where it is, and put it in a graveyard or cemetery or somewhere. DAVID: So those are the words he said. How did he say those words? CASONDRA: Oh, with so much passion and delivery behind them and just the very firm look on his face of, like, this needs to get done now. And I’m sick and tired of looking at it. I’m tired of passing by it. MOSES: [laughter] Well, I had not planned on saying anything. Nope. Nope. All I knew is that we’re going to the courthouse. It was in my hands. And they did not give me a script. And I told them, it’s very dangerous to have me to speak without a script. The courthouse was filled with people. And when I made the statements about the statue, there was a great applause. Some even stood up applauding. But from that day to this day, I have not received a text from Judge West. Not one. I was anticipating a text from him that week. “We need to sit down and have breakfast.” That’s what I was anticipating but no, he has not. He come by my church on the fourth Sunday in February for a wedding. Of course, he did the cordial thing and come up to speak to me and all that. That’s the right thing to do. And so he did that. And that’s it. DAVID: Pastor Moses may not have inspired Judge West to do anything. But his intervention did spark a second serious wave of protest. Max Vanderpool, a fellow agitator on the interracial ministerial committee, led the charge. MAX: I reached out to Moses several times. And I was like, “Why has the fiscal court not taken this up? Like, 20-some pastors signed this letter. You’ve met with David West, what, five times?” So I messaged David and then my own magistrate, Justin Ray, and I said, “Look, this thing has no business on the lawn. Pastors have reached out to you. I’ve been hearing nothing but crickets. You know, what’s the deal?” So I got a lunch, and we talked. I won’t betray the confidence of that lunch on his end. DAVID: But he emerged with a plan. MAX: What I feel like the fiscal court wants the pastors to do—and this isn’t said directly—is: “If you guys could drum up enough support that gives us political cover so we can go, man, you know, look at all the young people from the high schools and the pastors and they’re causing a stink and oh, what are we going to do? I guess we have to move it.” [laughter] DAVID: So the ministers once again began to protest. About twenty of them got together on a Sunday afternoon at First Baptist Church. MAX: And we determined that we were all of one accord to see the Confederate monument moved off the courthouse lawn. And we also agreed upon a strategy to make it happen. DAVID: First, instead of going through Judge West, they would more directly confront the six magistrates. They signed a new letter requesting that the statue be moved to the cemetery. Second, this group, many of whom are fairly conservative, more explicitly deployed their moral authority. MAX: If the pastors push, I mean, what are you going to do, right? “Man, the pastors are all crotchety, you know, moving this Confederate monument and getting in everybody’s business.” DAVID: Even more compelling was that the ministers ran the theological gamut. MAX: It’s an assortment of liberal mainline, evangelical, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, Black, white. You can’t look at this gathering of pastors and say, “Well, it’s just the political left. Or it’s just. No, it’s pretty broad. DAVID: Third, they sent a delegation of ministers to the mayor of Nicholasville to see if he might be willing to receive the statue at the city-owned Maple Grove Cemetery. MAX: Alex Carter, the mayor of Nicholasville, signaled a willingness to receive this monument to get it off the courthouse lawn. There was just something about his body language. His body language was open. The look on his face. DAVID: The fourth part of their strategy was to go public. MAX: I don’t want to see it get to this point where it gets ugly. But there was a willingness to, okay, we’ll organize lots of people to show up. We’ll lean into a media circus. We don’t want that. But we’re willing, you know. How far out are we willing to go? And there seemed to be a willingness to go all the way. DAVID: They made a video called “Move the Monument.” VIDEO: In the dedication speech, Bennett Young said this: “There are many instances in history where the cause of the just is defeated and where wrong has prevailed.” In that speech, he’s making it clear that they believed, that they were expressing through this monument, an understanding that the defeat of the Confederacy was bad—and wrong. Pastors in Jessamine County want to see this monument moved off the courthouse lawn and moved to Maple Grove Cemetery to communicate to the people of Jessamine County that everybody—every American, regardless of the color of your skin—is welcome here. That every American, regardless of the color of your skin, can get justice here. Every American, regardless of the color of your skin, can participate in government and all the aspects of our civic life together. No American is excluded from that. DAVID: It was beautifully done, and it released on social media to lots of attention. Including coverage from Lexington television stations. Having set the stage, the ministers prepared for their final move: a confrontation of the magistrates at the fiscal court. The ministers would all file in and speak one right after the other during the public comment section of the meeting. DAVID: So the rumor mill says that you all planned a surprise presentation of your petition. MAX: That is true. We determined no one on the fiscal court was going to bring this matter to the fiscal court. And by showing up as a surprise, it means that no one person is pressured to do that as an elected representative. And they can have the political covering of “Man, these pastors!” Because it’s the South, David. DAVID: I don’t think any of you thought that this statue could potentially come down. But I am sensing something different in this moment. MAX: I’m a glass half empty. I’m an Eeyore. My default personality is “Well, I knew that was gonna happen.” DAVID: But I’m sensing some hope here. MAX: There’s a resolve. Something has shifted. There’s been a lot of prayer. Like this meeting this morning. There’s a group text of all of us pastors and “I’m praying, I’m praying, I’m praying. I couldn’t be there, but I’m praying.” You’re right. Something, I don’t know what it is. . . . I think this can happen. DAVID: But again it didn’t. Max’s inner Eeyore was right. The confrontation with the magistrates turned out to be one of the least surprising surprises ever. I heard about it a full two days before it even happened, while hiking in Colorado. So I dispatched two of my students, Taylor and Kaity, to cover the event. Others must have heard about it too, because my students found four armed police officers and a courtroom full of opponents and defenders of the monument. After the official docket concluded and the court moved into the “public concerns” section of the meeting, Pastor Moses rose. He submitted the ministers’ petition to the magistrates. And then in front of the crowd, he explained why. RADFORD: Because we do not need in our face any reminders that African Americans were mistreated and less than human beings in many cases, and not equal to European Americans. DAVID: Then the public took turns giving four-minute speeches. Bob Barney presented the results of his survey. BOB: I called and spoke to 1,000 Democrats. I didn’t tell them what to think. I asked them what they thought. 71 percent do not want the Confederate statue removed from the courtyard. What have these ministers done to listen to the people of our county? DAVID: Then Bob excoriated the ministers for getting involved in politics. Telling them to stick to spiritual matters. BOB: These religious leaders want all the taxpayers of Jessamine County to pay so that they are not offended. DAVID: Carolyn Dupont, his political adversary, spoke too. CAROLYN: Now I hold in my hand a copy of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession. It says, “Our position is thoroughly identified with slavery.” And I want to suggest to you that that statue carries forth the idea that the rebellion was not sinful but was right. I don’t think that’s the message that we want to send here in Jessamine County. Thank you. DAVID: A dozen others spoke as well, mostly talking past each other. The magistrates didn’t say a word. At the end, Judge West praised the citizens for their civility and promised more conversation. And it was over. . . . And then, yet again, nothing happened. DAVID: So we’re sitting here, right by the statue, sitting in the nice shade. Maybe 10 or 15 feet away looking up at it. Nice view of his backside. [laughter] Obviously, the petition didn't work. It’s still there. I mean, how do you feel personally looking at this thing, given all the work that you put into that petition? JENNA: I don’t know. I think that it’s sad it’s still here. It’s been a really long time. DAVID: This is Jenna Sparks, the homeschooler who started it all. In the years since Jenna launched her petition, she’s graduated high school. Right now she’s working at a chicken place during the day and going to cosmetology school at night. JENNA: The last email that I got from Judge West I was told that they have some stuff in the works and that they were going to have a proposition soon. I sent him a few emails every couple of months until I think February of 2021. And eventually, he just stopped responding. And I didn’t really know where to go from there, and I was entering my senior year of high school, so I just kind of just went with what was going on and haven’t had much involvement since then. DAVID: So you were, I think, still fifteen years old when we first talked on your parents’ porch. I think you had a little brother who was just born maybe. I remember sitting there and being so impressed with how smart and intellectually curious and civically engaged and idealistic you were. JENNA: Thank you. DAVID: And you just expressed to me a little less idealism than you did back then. JENNA: Yeah. DAVID: Do you feel like you’ve lost some of that idealism, given these experiences? JENNA: I think 2020 really jaded me. DAVID: On this beautiful sunny June morning, she described to me her feelings of powerlessness. She was a young woman, she lamented, trying to get stuff done in what still felt like a man’s world. But most of all, she felt bad about her friend Pastor Moses and his disappointments. JENNA: I believed that there was more justice in our community than there was. I believe that there were a lot more a lot more kindness and a lot more kinship and that we had a lot more allies. I am very discouraged. There was a lot of energy and a lot of emotion put into that for the statue to still be here and for the community to have not changed for the better at all. PART THREE: WHO’S REALLY ERASING HISTORY? DAVID: As I sat there with a disillusioned Jenna, I thought back to my own beginning . . . when as a newcomer to Jessamine County, I was told that there was a Confederate statue on the courthouse lawn. At first, I had shaken my head in amusement at what seemed like a southern exoticism. Then I used it as a teaching tool with my students. But my conversations with Jenna, Pastor Moses, and Rev. Gates had raised the stakes. Trying to remember rightly was becoming an exercise of justice for me. I began this podcast series—and this episode, this very last episode—with a question: How is it possible, a full century and a half after the Civil War, that a statue honoring soldiers who fought to enslave Black people still stands? Around the time of my last conversation with Jenna, I found an important clue . . . once again, in the library’s microfilm machine. It was the May 27, 1898, issue of the Jessamine Journal. The Spanish-American War had just begun. A Navy battleship called the U.S.S. Maine had just exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. The president prepared for war. Jessamine County was all in. On a warm Saturday afternoon, a large crowd gathered on the courthouse lawn to rally support. Downtown buildings flew American flags and wore red, white, and blue bunting. Piccolos and drums played patriotic tunes. Interestingly, attention soon turned to the recently erected Confederate statue. Two old veterans mounted the pedestal. One was Jake Sandusky, a former Confederate soldier. The other was S. S. Cole, a Union veteran and superintendent of Camp Nelson National Cemetery. These two men, former enemies but now comrades, raised “Old Glory” alongside the rebel statue. This re-union of North and South brought forth a mighty cheering from the throng below. Reconciliation, says Judge West, was a beautiful thing. WEST: At this time, southern and northern soldiers were having reunions. There was a healing in the nation. We weren’t going to hate each other because of what side you fought on. DAVID: This is the true meaning of the statue, he told me. Not white supremacy. WEST: I don’t know that it was put up to assign African Americans to an inferior position. I don’t know that that was the heart. DAVID: Rather, it was the coming together in unity of sides that had once fought. And it was possible again now, said Judge West. WEST: What I would love to see is the 90 percent say, “You know what? This is offensive to a segment of our population and harmful. And let’s come together as a community and make a change.” DAVID: But that clearly wasn’t happening. And it didn’t happen back in 1898 either. In fact, this moment of reconciliation between Union and Confederate nearly turned deadly on the very next page of the Jessamine Journal. An article entitled “War Flashes” described a young man’s attempt to go fight the Spanish in Cuba. Ernest Holloway was his name. Holloway’s enlistment had started routinely enough. The five-foot, nine-inch, 182-pound Jessamine County native successfully passed his physical examination. But when military drills began the next day, someone recognized him. It was Holloway’s former employer, who informed the officers that Holloway was in fact a quote “half-breed negro.” When Holloway’s fellow recruits found out, they were so livid that they began talking about tar and feathers and, even more concerning, a rope. Officers quickly transferred him to a segregated unit before the lynching could take place. Together, these incidents—the gesture of unity at the statue and the near-lynching at the army base—suggest that so-called reconciliation came at a price. Historian David Blight has contended that the North, wanting the South’s natural resources and cheap labor, welcomed Confederate states back into the Union. And the South said sure, as long as we can impose racial segregation. This bargain also reshaped the narrative of the Civil War. War memory began to center national unity, not the moral crusade over slavery. Frederick Douglass, the great Black orator, was shattered. He declared, “Whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.” So the cost of reconciling the North and the South was a centering of white stories, white culture, white experiences, white priorities. War memory—which prioritized Union over emancipation—encouraged the development of unequal political and economic policies. Going forward, Jim Crow ruled. Black citizens could not enter the courthouse through the front door. Nor did they receive equal justice when they entered from the back. Reconciliation did not include Black folk. Not long after I found this 1898 issue of the newspaper, I had a conversation that included the same theme of unity. DAVID: It’s a cool summer August afternoon here in Jessamine County. I’m standing in the front lawn of the Jessamine County Courthouse right by the Confederate statue and David West just came out to check on me again. Clearly not happy that we’re here pointing at the statue and asking questions about it. DAVID: We is me and Simeon, a student research assistant. We were surveying passers-by about the statue. Unfortunately, we forgot to turn on the recorder when Judge West approached us. But I described the encounter just after it happened. DAVID: At one point, he said, “If you don’t stir the pot, it doesn’t get stinky.” And clearly that’s what he thinks we’re doing. DAVID: When I told Pastor Moses about this exchange, he had a pithy response. RADFORD: Some stuff need to be stirred up. It should never been erected, so it need to come down. DAVID: On the face of it, unity and reconciliation sound good. They sound virtuous. And I really think that many of the people who promote them intend for the very best. I don’t believe that Judge West wants our statue to communicate white supremacy. But what I’ve learned from my Black neighbors over the past five years is that this language sometimes empowers those already in power—and disempowers those who history has already taken advantage of. It can avoid real conversation, prop up the status quo, and put the burden on the marginalized population to give way. Racial power dynamics are still here. The past isn’t really past. DAVID: I’m standing here beside the statue for the last time in this podcast. I stand here as a citizen of Jessamine County who wants my community to be a place for all of my neighbors to thrive. I want all of them to have a voice. But to Pastor Moses and many others the statue is a constant reminder of a past that includes generations of inequality and violence—a history that is powerfully symbolized by the Confederacy. Soldiers aren’t neutral, and this soldier statue that is towering above me right now is not a dispassionate historical artifact. Everything about him—his posture, his inscriptions, his location at the center of civic life—is a celebration. He’s a celebration that erases our violent past. He’s a celebration that erases our inspiring past of Black resilience. Each time I gaze at this statue—and I do it a lot!—I find myself, ironically enough, empathizing with those who worry about . . . erasing history. DAVID: As I left the statue for my final interview, I didn’t feel much hope. Crossing Main St. and walking past Joe’s Cock & Bull Bar, a popular watering hole, didn’t help. DAVID: I’m in the heart of Herveytown now. This Black district has been the site of so much suffering. It’s where the women and children expelled from Camp Nelson way back in 1864 were dumped by the Union Army. It’s where their descendants were subjected to poverty and violence and Jim Crow for the next century. DAVID: As I hung a right on York St. and caught my first glimpse of the red brick tower of First Baptist Church, I could see that significant inequality remains. The wealth gap is deep and wide, and there’s very little representation in county government. All of the top elected officials are white men. Even if the statue were to come down, there’s so much more to do. And then I walk through the church’s front door, down the center aisle on the sanctuary’s dark purple carpet. Pastor Moses greets me. This is our seventh interview, and he’s in a reflective mood. RADFORD: And honestly, now I’m disappointed. Because after all this time, after two and a half years, nothing’s been done about it. DAVID: What do you think ultimately will happen? RADFORD: What I really think? Basically nothing. It wouldn’t surprise me if nothing is done about it. Because it’s Jessamine County. I’m just being frank and honest. Jessamine County is too white—and too Republican. DAVID: This is Pastor Moses at his most gloomy. And I’m inclined to agree. I’m feeling very little hope that this statue will come down. Or that our community will even have a substantive public conversation about it. But I hope I’m wrong. And if I am, it wouldn’t be the first time that someone underestimated the power of the Black church. Indeed, just minutes later, Pastor Moses makes a different prediction. RADFORD: I think through some more dialogue, people begin to see and they’ll turn. And eventually it will be moved. DAVID: Give me a number. RADFORD: What do you mean? DAVID: How many years? RADFORD: Oh! Within the next four or five years. It gonna take a while. But I believe it going to happen. And I hope it happens soon. DAVID: He’s got reason for hope—historical reason for hope—hope rooted in memory of a past that most citizens of Jessamine County have forgotten. In the 1860s, against all odds, members of this very church fled their enslavers and seized their freedom at Camp Nelson. In the 1960s, against all odds, members of this church, even though they were reviled for being divisive, sued the Jessamine County Board of Education to end racial segregation. In the face of Klan threats and burning crosses, 13-year-old Marsha Mason won equal access to public schools from a U.S. district court. But it took stirring the pot. In both cases, white moderates didn’t willingly advocate for change. They called for unity—and an end to demonstrations. Pastor Moses sees these same dynamics playing out now. RADFORD: I see. I see him both sides. DAVID: He’s referring to Judge West. RADFORD: As a politician, “I don’t want to rock the boat. I need the people with me. Because our county is majority European. So I need to make sure I keep them happy. And majority Republican. So, you know, I got to make sure.” DAVID: This was the political side, he says, the side that came out to tell me to quit stirring the pot. The side that requires Pastor Moses to keep on stirring the pot. But he also says there’s another side to the judge. RADFORD: Then on the human part, he’s very knowledgeable of how hurtful that statue is. I believe the man really genuinely care about people. And I believe he as a human being, as a Christian, he love everybody. And as a businessman . . . DAVID: Judge West is a longtime funeral home director here in Jessamine County. RADFORD: He do business for everybody and treat Black and white alike when it come to time of death and picking up their bodies and ministering to those families. If it wasn’t for losing the support of the general public in Jessamine County, I think he would already had it down. We as African Americans are hurt by the activities that have gone on in this county from time to time. He is very knowledgeable of all that. And I believe he’s hurt because of how things are, as human being. If he can let the human being part overshadow the political part, it’d be even better. [laughs] DAVID: He leans back in his chair. This is Pastor Moses at his best—at his most pastoral, presiding over a community, presiding over a church that has been saving souls, feeding bodies, lifting spirits, and seeking freedom and justice since slavery times. All the way back to its beginning in 1846. He knows the human capacity for sin. But he also believes in redemption. Yes, the Confederate soldier that fought for a “cause so grand” still stands tall. It still oversees his labor. But he knows that the Black church has a longer history—a grander history—than this statue. Pastor Moses is strong. He’s happy. He’s not worried about anything. He’s not fearing anybody. He knows change is gonna come. OUTRO: This has been “Rebel on Main.” Special thanks to story editor Stephen Smith, Barry Blair for audio production and composing original music, and Asbury University and the Louisville Institute for their generous support. Please leave a rating and a review so others can find us. For pictures of Jessamine County during the Spanish-American War, of the courthouse square, and of First Baptist Church, head to rebelonmain.com. I’m David Swartz. Thanks so much for listening.