Statement in Support of Overriding the Landmarks Commission Denial of the Commission of Appropriateness to

Remove the Cenotaph from Forest HIll Cemetery

I am asking the Common Council to override the Landmarks Commission denial of the Certification of
Appropriateness. The Confederate cenotaph should be preserved but moved from Forest Hill Cemetery.

The Landmark Commission’s decision focussed on the cenotaph’s landmark status and not on the context of its
placement or its negative meaning today. That is the role of the Common Council.

The Landmarks Commission’s “fifty year standard” says that monuments more than fifty years old are considered
historical and that changes to them affects the historical nature of a site.

We are dealing with an over fifty year old monument now because our nation chose not to deal with our
monuments to racism, white supremacy, and the Confederacy until recently. Now is the time.

The cenotaph that was placed in our park was part of a monuments movement by a pro-Confederate organization
in the early 1900s. This organization was part of the effort to reestablish white supremacist governments in the
states of the former Confederacy. Among the goals of that movement was to rewrite the history of the Civil War -
to deny the centrality of race-based slavery to the Confederate cause.

In Madison the monument was erected under the canard of honoring war dead. European-American Union
veterans did take part in the dedication of the Confederate cenotaph in Forest Hill at its 1906 dedication and in
memorial ceremonies afterward. While this looked like a reconciliation between veterans of the North and South,
the action excluded African-American veterans and ignored the ongoing racist terrorism and disenfranchisement
in the South.

Landmarks Commission chair Stu Levitan reminded us that WWII German POWs were interned in Wisconsin.
Some died of disease and injury and are buried here. After WWII we never would have allowed Nazi sympathizers
from Germany to erect at their burial site an additional monument that even hinted at support for Nazism. That is
essentially what happened at the Confederate rest area in our Forest Hill Cemetery.

Members of the Landmarks Commission who voted to deny the COA cited the need to keep the Confederate rest
area in the condition it existed in 1906 in order to facilitate historical discussions. Nearby historical institutions are
more appropriate and effective settings for this discussion. The State Historical Society possibly could display the
cenotaph alongside the other Civil War items it houses and is in a much better position to encourage discussion of
context than is a public cemetery.

Traditionally, cenotaphs are placed in the home communities of those whose remains are buried elsewhere. If
local historical institutions do not accept the cenotaph, I suggest we offer it to a Confederate military cemetery in
Louisiana, Alabama, or Tennessee, the home states of the Confederates POWs buried in Madison. That is where
the cenotaph should have been placed in 1906.

Madison has a serious problem with racial inequities. We are struggling to do better. Among the ways we can do
better is to dismantle the infrastructure and symbols of racism in our community. The cenotaph is one of
Madison’s subtle symbols of racism.

We have taken a long time and put a lot of energy into the issue of monuments for soldiers who fought to set up a
separate nation founded on race-based slavery. As Alder Arvina Martin reminded us, we have not dealt with the
destruction of Native American burial mounds to construct Forest Hill Cemetery. As Alder Harrington-McKinney
asked, where are the markers to victims of lynching? Our community is ready to be done with this issue and to
devote our energy to other issues.

To quote General and President Ulysses Grant, “(The Confederate soldiers) fought so long and valiantly, and had
suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought,
and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those
who were opposed to us.”

These fallen Confederate soldiers deserve to be memorialized with individual gravestones and a well-maintained
burial ground at Forest Hill Cemetery. With the removal of the cenotaph, Forest Hill’s Confederate rest area will be
almost identical to its adjacent Union rest area.

I am available to answer questions.

Leonard H. Cizewski