chapter 18 Who Owns the Past?
Page 220 →In 2015, Dean Martha Minow appointed me to a committee of students, faculty, alumni, and administrators to examine whether Harvard Law School’s ceremonial shield should be retired. A group of Harvard Law students, called Royall Must Fall, protested the use of the shield because its design replicated the family crest of the wealthy slave-owning Royall family. Isaac Royall Jr. endowed Harvard’s first law professorship in 1816, a precursor to the creation of the Law School a year later. In 1937, long after the Royal gift, the image of three sheaves of wheat, the coat of arms of the Royall family, was adopted by Harvard University as the Law School’s shield.
The Royall Must Fall group was inspired by the Rhodes Must Fall protests at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and Oriel College, Oxford University, England. The protest demanded the removal of statues and other symbols of Cecil Rhodes, a wealthy colonist whose gifts benefited universities and students. The gifts endowed the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Rhodes made his wealth in mining diamonds through the ruthless subjugation of black Africans under the system of apartheid. In 2015, the Rhodes Must Fall protestors were successful in removing a statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town, and in 2020 Oriel College voted to remove a Rhodes statue at Oxford. However, because of costs and other complications, the statue at Oriel College remains.
The Royall Must Fall message took on heightened meaning after the portraits of African American professors hanging in Wasserstein Hall were defaced using strips of black tape. In response to the Page 221 →defacing incident and students’ demand that the Law School abandon the shield, Dean Minow assembled a committee, led by Harvard Law Professor Bruce H. Mann, an able historian and consensus builder, to research and make a recommendation on whether the shield should be retired.
The committee was unanimous in recognizing that institutions must acknowledge their past associations with slavery, not to assign guilt, but to understand its continuing impact. For Harvard Law School, this meant reminding itself of the role of wealth derived from slave labor in its founding and using that knowledge to promote racial justice. The committee was not unanimous on the question of whether retaining the shield as the official symbol of the Law School helps or hinders reckoning with its past.
Professor Annette Gordon-Reed, recognized for her pioneering work on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, was a committee member. She argued that the continued presence of the shield showing the Law School’s association with its slave-owning benefactor is essential to ensuring that the community will not forget its past. Set against this view was the reality that the shield was dividing the Law School community. Many who became aware of its origins viewed the shield as a distasteful symbol rather than an opportunity to learn from the past. The consensus was that there are better ways to engage the past and its legacy than by retaining a symbol that so many members of the community reject.
The committee recommended to the dean that the shield be retired. The dean endorsed the recommendation and forwarded it to the President and Fellows of Harvard College (the Corporation) for decision. The Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing board, approved the recommendation.
The decision to retire the Harvard Law School shield raised the larger question of who owns the past. Do we, as a society, have a duty to the past to preserve all symbols, monuments, and building naming’s, no matter how controversial or hurtful, to preserve an Page 222 →unbroken historical narrative of our past? Or should exceptions be made? If so, what standards should govern the exceptions, lest we destroy all unpopular symbols that offend contemporary sensibilities. Should history be scrubbed and, if so, how much? Who should have the power to speak about what content is appropriate? Must an institution have clear values and beliefs to guide the acceptability of symbols before they are shelved? Rather than erasing or editing the past, should the proper solution be to present a point and counterpoint narrative to ensure all points of view are represented?
The Elgin Marbles
Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin (1766–1841), was a Scottish member of the British House of Lords and a career diplomat. In 1798, George III appointed Elgin Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Sublime Porte of Selim III, Sultan of Turkey. At the time, England was at war with Napoleon, who had recently invaded Egypt. Lord Elgin’s official duty was to participate in the British effort to expel France from Egypt and to keep the Ottoman Empire on friendly terms with Great Britain. But Elgin also had a personal mission. He wanted to restore fine arts in Great Britain by introducing the art of Athens. Greece was then a part of the Ottoman Empire and had been under Ottoman rule since 1458.1
After the British expelled the French from Egypt, Lord Elgin became the most influential representative in Constantinople. Within weeks of the British victory, Lord Elgin secured an official Ottoman document (firman) granting permission to conduct certain architectural activities at the Acropolis, including detailed drawing, measuring, and molding. The firman was ambiguous, and its scope was interpreted to include removing bas-reliefs and sculptures, including metopes sculptured in high relief, from the Parthenon. While Lord Elgin removal activities were clearly beyond the scope of the firman, Elgin’s defense was that, over centuries, the Acropolis had been defaced and pounded into mortar. The classical Greek marble Page 223 →sculptures, made under the supervision of the architect and sculptor Phidias, are known as the Elgin Marbles. They have been housed safely in the British Museum for over 200 years.2
In his solitary travels through several countries, Lord Byron captured the events and people associated with each place in his celebrated work, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. In Canto 2, Byron’s Childe sitting amid the ruins of the Parthenon muses about the pillage of Greece’s architectural patrimony. In these stanzas, Byron immortalized the controversial activities of Lord Elgin in removing the ancient marbles from the Parthenon.
My son, Neville, and I viewed the Elgin Marbles on a trip to England in 2004. Nick Wheeler-Robinson told us that the Right Reverend Stephen Verney (1919–2009), father of Rachel Verney, Nick’s wife, has an ancestral connection to the Elgin Marbles. I was keen to have a conversation with Stephen about the Marbles.
The Verney family played an important role in the history of England since the thirteenth century. Sir Ralph Verney became Lord Mayor of London in 1465 and member of parliament for the City in 1472. The family manor known as Claydon House, which I have visited, is located in Middle Claydon in Buckinghamshire and is now a part of the National Registry.
Stephen lived in Blewbury, England, a quaint little Saxon town tucked away in the Thames Valley with its thatched roof cottages, watercress beds, and winding lanes. He was an intriguing man whose gentle demeanor as a retired Anglican bishop belied his earlier years as a British intelligence officer in the Greek resistance during World War II. He studied at Harrow school and Balliol College, Oxford, reading the classics and becoming fluent in Greek. Putting his Greek to good use during the war, he had many exploits in Crete. He arranged the release of captured prisoners and enabled defections.
After the war, Stephen trained for the priesthood at Westcott House, Cambridge University. Among his many interesting church Page 224 →assignments, in 1970, he became canon of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. He believed the Anglican church was too conservative and began addressing such issues as nuclear disarmament, just war, opposition to capital punishment, and gay rights. He published several significant theological books.3
I paid a visit to Stephen at his home in Blewbury. Upon entering Blewbury, we took a right turn off the main road (A417) onto South Street and passed the Load of Mischief, a pub and inn from the eighteenth century. A hundred years ago when Blewbury had a population of about 600, it boasted six pubs—a merry town it was. From South Street, we took the first left down Church Road and then made a right turn onto a winding lane. We parked near the eleventh century Parish Church, St Michaels and All Angels. Our destination was across the lane from the church to a 1709 structure converted from a school to a house.
A tidbit of information I had garnered before our visit was that Stephen’s great-grandfather had proposed marriage to Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). He was rejected and settled for marrying her sister instead. With this information as an appetizer, I could hardly wait for the main course.
We knocked and were greeted at the door by a diminutive older gentleman in a grey cardigan sweater. In a faint and stuttering voice, he introduced himself as Stephen Verney. There was an air of distinction that surrounded him—he was self-assured, a man at peace with himself. I had met Stephen briefly about twelve years earlier at Pigotts at the christening of his grandson, Caleb. Caleb is the second son of Nick and Rachel. While Stephen and I were formally introduced back then, we didn’t really remember each other because we hadn’t engaged in any meaningful conversation.
After he introduced his unassuming wife, Sandra, of Welsh stock, we proceeded through the house to sit in the garden. After a brief tour of their robust garden, we sat on a patio and took tea. “So, what do you think of the controversy over the Elgin Marbles?” Page 225 →I asked. In a halting voice, Stephen said: “I’m rather conflicted. On the one hand, it would seem fitting for the Marbles to be repatriated to Athens to take their place among the ruins of the Parthenon. They would make the Parthenon complete, and those visiting would have a total experience. On the other, would the Greeks be able to look after them? The Marbles have survived intact in the British Museum for the past two hundred years with open access for the world to view. I’m not sure what kind of stewards the Greeks would be.”
At that moment, Sandra got up and walked to the garden to retrieve a stalk-like plant with linear leaves and elongated clusters of berries. While showing it to us, she explained that it was an asphodel, a Greek plant, which was the stuff of poets. The plant was mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey. In Greek poetry and mythology, the asphodel was the flower of Hades and the dead, sacred to Persephone. Sandra mused that the flower is referenced in the New Testament, although no one seemed to be able to find the chapter and verse.
After a brief pause, Stephen continued: “You know the Greeks are passionate about freedom.” Stephen then talked about his activities with the Greek resistance during World War II. His assignment was to organize resistance against the German occupation. “You know, I really didn’t appreciate the danger of that assignment when I was a young man,” he said with a sheepish smile as he tried to mask the look of proud accomplishment. “What do you think about the Marbles, Jim,” he asked, seizing the role of interrogator, and training his eyes on me. “Well, I think there is a rather complicated legal aspect to the matter. How do the British return the Marbles without admitting having taken them illegally? I suppose they could loan the Marbles to Greece and never bother to retrieve them. It could set a dangerous precedent, and the title to all antiquities taken from a foreign land could be in dispute.” “Oh, Jim,” he sighed, “you have made the matter even more complicated for me. You’re right, if the Marbles go back, then everything would have to go back.”
Page 226 →Continuing, he said: “You know the Marbles destroyed my grandfather, Lord Elgin.” Stephen’s mother was the daughter of the 7th Earl of Elgin. Near the end of our conversation, Stephen started to talk about his grandfather’s appointment as viceroy to India during the reign of Queen Victoria and about the driving personality of Florence Nightingale. I could have stayed all day and the next talking to Stephen about the genealogy of his family and its connections to the Marbles, but I had promised Neville a tour of Oxford, and the day was waning. I bade Stephen farewell and was left to my thoughts and imagination.
The larger question of who owns the Elgin Marbles (now referred to as the Parthenon Sculptures because of their disputed patrimony) remains. Is the British claim to the Marbles illegitimate because the legal document (firman) establishing title was ambiguous from the beginning? If legal title cannot be established through documentation, has Britain established a legitimate title to the Marbles through preservation of the sculptures for over two centuries? Should legal title to historical objects, like the Marbles, rest in the hands of those best able to preserve them? The Marbles may well have been destroyed over time but for the British intervention. There have been negotiations between the British Museum and the Greek government to come to some agreement that would allow for the return of the Marbles to the Acropolis, but those negotiations have recently stalled.
Black Lives Matter
The Black Lives Matter movement was a response to the unequal treatment of, and discrimination against, people of color. The movement was propelled onto the national and international stage after the shocking police killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. A white police officer nonchalantly knelt on Floyd’s neck for about eight minutes while he was on the ground pleading “I can’t breathe,” causing asphyxiation leading to his death. The incident threw into Page 227 →clear relief the harsh treatment of Black people in the criminal justice system. It also brought to the fore a deeper history of discrimination against Black people in housing, jobs, and healthcare.
The widespread protests reignited the push to remove monuments, statues, and other symbols that glorify slavery and white supremacy. Most of the Confederate icons were not constructed at the end of the Civil War to commemorate the South. Instead, they were erected during the Jim Crow era, at the beginning of the twentieth century, as a display of white supremacy. The monuments were designed to intimidate Black Americans and signal that white people were in charge. White supremacists were determined to show Black people that the lost cause of the Confederacy was still alive and that their subjugation would continue. Many southern states boldly and proudly flew the Confederate battle flag on statehouse property. The State of Mississippi enshrined the battle flag as part of its state flag.
The Black Lives Matter movement influenced the actions of public officials across the nation. Police reforms have been adopted to improve the treatment of Black people in the criminal justice system. Controversial policing tactics, such as chokeholds and neck restraints, are being outlawed, and greater emphasis is being placed on police training.
Many state and local governments have recognized that Confederate memorials are symbols of hate. Statues have been removed from public spaces. In Orangeburg, my hometown, the town council and mayor have taken action to remove the Confederate monument from the town square and to rename John C. Calhoun Drive.4 However, these actions may be all for naught because the Republican-controlled state legislature is close to adopting a bill to protect nearly every historic statue, monument, street, and building name across South Carolina.
Notwithstanding the success of many efforts to remove offensive monuments to promote racial healing, still more than 2,000 Confederate symbols remain in public spaces across the country.5 With Page 228 →the return of Donald Trump to the White House, efforts to remove symbols of hate from public places have been stalled. US Army bases named after generals in the Confederate army (e.g., Forts Benning, Bragg, Gordon, Hill, Hood, and Lee), that were renamed after other military leaders pursuant to recommendation of the congressionally authorized Naming Commission, have reverted to the names of the original bearers. To circumvent federal law, the new namesakes bear the same surnames as the Confederate generals but ostensibly named after lower ranked soldiers. In addition, there are instances of Confederate statutes that have been removed from public lands being restored to their original location. The bottom line is that many efforts undertaken to promote racial healing are being snuffed out by the Trump administration.
Again, who should decide what public monuments are to be preserved, especially those that convey hatred for certain segments of the community? Should the matter be left to the fiat of the governing class? Or should there be community standards to resolve claims of legitimate or illegitimate heritage and patrimony? Who owns the past?