Tennessee Pastor Reflects On His Effort To Erect Black Soldier Statue
Chris Williamson (left) poses with the “March to Freedom” statue with its sculptor, Joe F. Howard (right). Photo courtesy of Williamson.
FRANKLIN, Tenn.— After the deadly White supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, a group of pastors in Franklin, Tennessee, called for their town’s prominent 37-foot statue of a Confederate soldier located in the town square to be removed.
A lawsuit stunted their effort, but locals found a creative solution. On Oct. 23, hundreds gathered in the town square to witness the erection of a new statue of a U.S. Colored Troops soldier, honoring Black soldiers who fought for the Union in the Civil War.
There are several statues across the country honoring Black and formerly enslaved soldiers but few in the South and even fewer standing directly outside a town hall.
Chris Williamson — the senior pastor and founder of Strong Tower Bible Church, a local multiracial church — reflected for the ReligionUnplugged.com podcast on what the moment meant for a minister like himself and the role the church must play in such debates. Williamson and two other local pastors worked with the city for a year to install five historical sites that today honor the Black experience of the Civil War.
“The church, unfortunately, has been complicit since slavery,” Williamson said. “And the church by and large, the White evangelical church, is still complicit today as it pertains to injustice and institutional racism. But God has always had a witness, as he had in the days of Elijah ... and there are few of us, but hey, you know, we will be a voice crying in the wilderness about things that are not right and what needs to be undone and repaired in the country.”
The statue, titled March to Freedom, sits outside Franklin’s historic courthouse. The soldier stands with one foot on a decaying tree stump, reminiscent of the trees that enslaved Black people were tied to at slave auctions and also hung and lynched on. Near the solider is a partially buried pair of broken chain cuffs, meant to show that Black soldiers are never to be chained again.
The statue stands across the street from Chip, the Confederate soldier statue installed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group of female descendants of Confederate soldiers dedicated to preserving Confederate history. The group owns the small plot of land that the Confederate statue is placed on.
Williamson described Franklin as a “Civil War town,” attracting history and Civil War buffs from all over. He explained that the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the killing of Heather Heyer — who was protesting the White nationalist rally — led a group of concerned women to organize a prayer gathering in 2017 in the town square where Chip stands tall.
“We felt that if something like that happened in Charlottesville and things like this were going on all around the country, as far as people pulling down statues and things — we knew that it could happen in Franklin,” he said. “So we got out as clergy and concerned citizens just to pray, and then the media showed up, as well as sheriffs and police.”
The group asked one individual at the meeting, pastor Kevin Riggs, to pray, and he announced afterward that the county should remove Chip. That brought a harsh response, including a death threat through email. But the event sparked a conversation among town historians, council members and preachers on how to tell the overlooked stories of local heroes and events that took place in the district.
“Our focus became what we can put up,” Williamson said.
This led to the construction of five historical markers titled ”The Fuller Story,” meant to tell a more complete history of the Civil War era that includes Black Americans’ experiences before, during and after the war. For example, it marks the site where a slave auction was held outside an old courthouse, the Battle of Franklin, the Reconstruction period and an 1867 race riot that happened in Franklin. The fifth marker installed is called March to Freedom.
According to History.com, there are more than 700 Confederate monuments in the U.S. Bringing up this fact, Williamson shared that he believes most if not all Confederate monuments should be removed in order for the true history of the Civil War to be told.
“And so I believe, even in Franklin, there may be a group of people that will rise up and say, let’s remove Chip from the center of town,” Williamson said. “Again, we’re not trying to remove the history, but we may remove him and replace him with something that speaks to the unity in our community ... and the church should lead the way.”
Bethany Johnson studies journalism at The King’s College in New York City — in between brewing coffees for locals and tourists and photographing everyday life around the city. Her recent gallery, “On the Streets of New York: COVID-19” earned her an honorable mention from the Society of Professional Journalists.