Wealthy Chicagoan
One wealthy man in Chicago had his fortune protected from the Stock Market Crash of 1929. As the economy tanked, many workers lost their jobs. The banks closed, and savings vanished. Thousands of Chicagoans were left without a way to pay the bills, cover the rent, or even buy food.
But the wealthy man in Chicago still had money and felt their pain. He opened up a soup kitchen that served thousands perhaps their only meal of the day. He also made sure that clothing stores took care of those who couldn’t afford the literal shirts on their backs.
But there are no statues to this generous and worthy man in Chicago. Despite the lack of city gratitude, we still all know his name, albeit for a somewhat different reason: Al Capone.
His example serves two points. First, it doesn’t take a monument to remember history. Even the most vicious criminal, who used a baseball bat to kill two associates at a dinner, is not forgotten. And second: even evil people sometimes do something worthy of praise. Capone is remembered in Chicago; in fact, he visage is replicated in the wax museum. But he’s not handing out meals.
The Dam Tour
Herbert Hoover was a proponent of the Colorado River dam long before he was President of the United States. As Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge’s Secretary of Commerce, he pressed for the structure, both as a water conservation measure, and as a way to control floods in the California valleys where the river flowed. It took nine years, and his election to the Presidency to get it done, as well as complex deals with three states and Mexico for the water rights.
And the dam itself took five more years to build, creating Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States (when its full). Ninety-six men lost their lives in the construction process. When it was completed, Hebert Hoover was out, a failed Presidency in the light of the Great Depression. The new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, dedicated the dam on September 30th 1935, with 10,000 spectators there for the ceremony. But Roosevelt was not interested in honoring his predecessor. The engineering marvel was called the Boulder Dam for the first twelve years of its existence.
It wasn’t until FDR was gone, and Republicans gained control of the post-war Congress, that the name was changed to the Hoover Dam. So Hoover’s role wasn’t forgotten.
Call it What?
Mt. McKinley was the highest peak in North America. While it took until the late 1800’s for humans to know that, it was there for hundreds of thousands of years before. McKinley peaks at 20,310 feet high, and was named in 1896 by a random gold miner who arrived at its base. He liked the Governor of Ohio, a Republican candidate for the Presidency. William McKinley won the election, and the name stuck.
But it’s the highest mountain in North America, so it’s not like it was “discovered” in 1896. The native peoples of Alaska were well aware of the peak that they called Denali. Alaskans wanted to restore the original name to the mountain for decades, but Congress blocked the change. Politics being politics, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Congressman Ralph Regula of Canton, Ohio led the campaign for “McKinley”. President McKinley was a native of Canton; his tomb is located there.
In 1980 the National Park surrounding the mountain was renamed Denali National Park, but the mountain itself remained Mt. McKinley. It wasn’t until 2015 during the Obama Administration that the name Denali was restored to the mountain itself.
Erasing
History wasn’t erased by not placing a statue of Al Capone on the Magnificent Mile or down by the “Bean” in Chicago. And Capone’s good acts could not erase the criminal actions of his life. No one forgot the role that Herbert Hoover played in the building of the dam that now bears his name. Politics prevented his immediate recognition, but Hoover lived to see his name placed on the dam he was so instrumental in developing.
And the almost random naming of a mountain in Alaska for the Governor of Ohio running for President took over a hundred years to undo. But today, it is the ancestral name of Denali now graces the maps, the Park, and the Mountain itself.
Who Writes Your Story
(Hamilton, of course)
Names change, and monuments and statues go up and come down. They are not history: they symbolize a view of history. That’s why it is perfectly appropriate to take a statue of Robert E. Lee down in Richmond, while one remains on Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg. It’s not erasing history, in fact, its laying history bare for all to see. Lee was a fine soldier, and an honorable man. But, as modern day General Stanley McChrystal laid out in his essay explaining his own changing view of the Confederate general:
“Lee’s own statements on slavery are conflicting, but his overall record is clear. Although he repeatedly expressed his theoretical opposition to slavery, he in fact reflected the conventional thinking of the society from which he came and actively supported the “peculiar institution” of slavery. Well before joining the Confederacy, Lee loathed abolitionists, and his feelings hardened as the Civil War dragged on” (Atlantic).
Lee’s statue in Richmond and other towns was erected as part of re-writing history in the 1890’s, the revisionist movement to erase the stain of slavery. But just because it was rewritten in the past, doesn’t mean it can’t be revealed in the present. McKinley became Denali. Boulder became Hoover. And Lee’s statues to racism should come down. His place in history won’t be erased. But we can remember him for what he really did.
