While Jim Lighthizer resides in a very rural part of Dorchester County these days, quite some distance from the Talbot County Courthouse and the controversial Talbot Boys statue that rests on its lawn, he comes into that debate with significant “street cred.”
For more than two decades, Jim has spent his professional life making Civil War history both prominent and relevant as the president of the American Battlefield Trust. During that time, he and his small staff and board of directors saved 52,000 acres of open space and 130 battlefields in 24 states by raising over $500 million to keep history alive.
Jim’s name might also ring a bell for some Marylanders. Before his involvement in preserving Civil War battlefields, he was a major player in Annapolis politics for most of the 1980s and 90s. First as a Democratic state delegate, then as Anne Arundel County Executive, and finally as the state’s Secretary of Transportation under Governor William Donald Schaefer, Lighthizer gained a real appreciation for preserving history and saving land in those positions.
With that kind of unique background, the Spy couldn’t think of a better subject to interview for our ongoing series entitled “The Talbot Boys Conservation.”
At 75 years old, Lighthizer is enjoying the freedom in retirement to speak one’s mind. With echoes of his friend Donald Schaefer’s famous frank way of speaking, Jim does not hold back in making his argument that the statue should stay right where it is.
In fact, Lighthizer also notes that having the Talbot Boys located just feet away from the Frederick Douglass monument as a contributing factor in not moving the C.S.A. memorial. He makes the case that this unique juxtaposition is just the kind of thing that keeps memory and history alive for generations to come.
We stay down with Jim at the WHCP studios in Cambridge to chat this week.
This video is approximately five minutes in length.
Nancy Callahan says
Kudos to Jim Lighthizer for his candor in defending and preserving “history.” Many of the folks eager to remove statues that they find “offensive” sadly have not the slightest idea what they “doth protest.” If we wish to learn from history and not repeat it, we cannot erase it. It serves no good purpose for any American in doing so.
Meg Lynch says
I think this is absolutely right. History should not be erased but discussed and learned from.
Deirdre LaMotte says
This statue, one of many identical made, is nothing but a bow to
white supremacy. That it was erected, and still stands, on a US Court house lawn, is insulting . Yes it is history. But statues are erected to
honor. There is no honor in slavery.
Bob Ingersoll says
With all due respect to Mr. Lighthizer, I believe he has presented the false equivalence that moving a statue from one place to another is somehow changing or erasing history. I believe that to not be true. It is rather insulting to most blacks and many whites to infer that they don’t know history, and that the reason for the Talbot Boys statue was to honor those Confederate Sons who died fighting for the cause of slavery, or “States Rights” as many call it.
The statue was erected in the throe of Jim Crow, when lynching was common on the Shore. If the statue had been placed there to merely honor the dead, then why was there never enough money to place a Union statue honoring blue uniformed dead? The reason for that is given as World War One was taking up all the funding. Really? Since the Union did actually win, wouldn’t it have been more representative of history to place a monument to them first? The answer seems obvious: those erecting the statue had other things in mind besides honoring the dead. Since the monument only honored the Confederate dead, we can infer the mindset of those who bought it and placed it on the courthouse lawn.
Winston Churchill may have been the one to coin the phrase,”History is written by the victors.” Looking back at the history of the Eastern Shore, and Maryland, the written and oral history has a definite White feel. The legal system was white, the press was white, the history is white. The ugly parts have been erased, omitted, ignored, or glossed over. No amount of statue relocation will change or erase the history of the Shore. But refusing to take an accurate look at our history, especially the “warts”, will always result in some having to endure it in silence, swallow it and “look away” as they pass official representations of that “history”.
We are now having a national conversation on the accuracy of our own history. Many states are trying to make it illegal to even consider teaching a more accurate view of the reality of our history. And still, many individuals seek to keep a bronze idol on the lawn of of the Talbot County Courthouse, knowing that it represents a skewed side of our history, while at the same time refusing to teach the reality of our history. There is something wrong there.
S Park says
With all due respect Mr. Ingersoll, I think you missed Lighthizers juxtaposition notion of Frederick Douglass on one side and The Talbot Boys on another. It seems to me that, that juxtaposition makes for the national conversation that were are now having and should continue to have for the next 100 years. In other words, bare lawn does not a conversation make. There is no “why” in a blank space.