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49 2 When Richmond Gained Perspective by Incongruity: Old South Tradition and New South Change in the Confederate Capital [O]ne of the unique aspects of my life is the juxtaposition of disparate events and people. —Arthur Ashe, Portrait in Motion The gothic walls of the VMI barracks were not the only site of conflict between division and identification in the Virginia of the late 1990s. Virginia ’s capital, Richmond, also was riddled with not one but two such controversies during this period. Whereas VMI’s conflict focused mainly on the shift from the segregation to the integration of the sexes, Richmond’s controversies stemmed mainly from the shift from the segregation to the integration of the races. Richmonders debated the appropriateness of bringing together symbols of the Old South’s order of division, in the form of depictions of Confederate leaders, with symbols of the New South’s order of identification, in the form of representations of civil rights leaders. While the presence of these debates may, at first glance, seem indicative of the deep racial divide still present in the city’s public and private lives, the juxtaposition of these previously incongruous symbols ultimately provided a venue in which Richmonders could identify with one another in their shared concern and reverence for the history of their city and their region. Richmond is a place where the past looms large in the present, a city remembered even today as the capital of the former Confederate States of America. As an expert on Richmond’s culture comments, “Richmond is known as a city obsessed with its past.” One of the places in which the past most asserts its influence in present-day Richmond is Monument Avenue, which features statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, J. E. B. Stuart, and Thomas J. “Stonewall ” Jackson; Confederate President Jefferson Davis; Confederate oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury; and, joining them there in 1996, tennis champion, author , and social activist Arthur Ashe Jr. Monument Avenue “serves as a shrine” to the city’s obsession with the past, infusing Richmond “with a mythology and demonstrat[ing] how history and perceptions of the past change, and how new meanings are created.”1 However, as fixated as Richmond is on its past, it is 50 Old South Tradition and New South Change in Richmond trying to revitalize itself by capitalizing on that history, as are many other cities . In 1999, therefore, as part of its Canal Walk redevelopment project, which sought to reenergize the city’s economic and cultural climate, the Richmond Historic Riverfront Foundation (RHRF) installed on the city’s floodwall a set of thirteen murals commemorating scenes from Richmond’s history, including one featuring Lee. These juxtapositions of past and present—Monument Avenue and its Confederate statues with a contemporary African American and his likeness , and Lee and other historical images with the city’s gleaming new redevelopment project—created or brought to the surface tension among Richmondarea residents who held seemingly incongruous perspectives on the city’s past, especially the history of its involvement in the Civil War and its subsequent race relations. The juxtaposition of these disparate images gave Richmonders the opportunity to gain what Kenneth Burke calls “perspective by incongruity.” Some residents found it incongruous that a statue of a twentieth-century African American athlete, author, and activist would be placed on the same ground of tradition as that occupied by monuments to Confederate luminaries. And by the same token, other citizens found incongruous a mural featuring the likeness of a nineteenth-century slavery-defending Confederate general on ground being hailed as the latest symbol of the city’s progress, the Canal Walk redevelopment area. When such terms, images, or symbols normally considered at odds with one another are placed side by side, dissonance results. And as the presence of the debates over the Ashe and Lee public art indicates, such dissonance manifests itself on a collective level as community conflict. In both of these controversies, an icon of the Southern tradition of division was juxtaposed with an icon of the Southern shift toward identification: Ashe, a symbol of change, was placed in the context of Monument Avenue, a symbol of tradition. Likewise, Lee, a symbol of tradition, was placed in the context of the Canal Walk, a symbol of change. Furthermore, the presence of these mirror-image debates within just a few years of one another in the same city can be seen as yet another level of juxtaposition in turn-of...

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