A history of racism, the KKK and crimes against American Indians: Colorado’s struggle with divisive monuments started long ago
One of Colorado’s most controversial monuments spotlighted by national conversation about statue removals
Spurred by the violence in Charlottesville, Va., the nation is once again in the middle of a heated disagreement over our past — or, more accurately, how the nation should remember its past.
Communities across the country are having difficult conversations as Confederate monuments are toppled by local governments and protesters worried that statues in the public square are venerating figures linked to painful chapters in our shared history.
People in Colorado have already been forced into this conversation. But when it happened here in the 1990s, the problematic Civil War figures commemorated in bronze were Union fighters and their crimes were against American Indians.
“For native people, this is a really interesting conversation about the Confederate monuments,” American Indian Movement activist Glenn Morris said. “All over the country, there’s tens of thousands of monuments to Indian killers and there’s names of towns, there’s names of mountains, there’s names of rivers.”
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