Battle Of Nashville – Frizzy Productions

“In Memory Of The 20,133 Who Served As United States Colored Troops In The Union Army – Dedicated In 2003”

I do not support the tearing down of any monument. Time has proven, that with the tearing down of something begins the erasing process of history. We want to assume in the living of the now that it doesn’t have an impact on our future. That in our flesh we have the ability to not allow the things to be forgotten as if memory isn’t a flaw of man. To destroy the existence of something that serves as a reflection of a time that once was, is clearly a mistake that we need to not keep making.

It is evident in our own history, that in the process of taking something over, we destroy what it once was, only to put up what it is now. Let us not keep making the same mistake. Let us not keep erasing history only for forget where we have traveled to and have been once before. History even in its ugliest time is still an important part of knowledge that we need not to allow to waste away into the land of forgotten. Forgetting is not the place of happiness. It is the place of confusion, which leaves the ability for repeating the same things that have happened over again. If not careful, we will set ourselves up for a future disaster.

I write this with the understanding of how we may feel emotionally about somethings of the past, but I encourage us to be stronger than to allow something that can’t do nothing to control you thereafter. Take its existence and let it be part of the lesson that you now need to teach. Let us not feel that history is not in the moments of now, and that education has ceased. Just like with every breath that you breathe gives you life longer. Knowledge received pushes you to places that you have never been before. Take the good with the bad in order to have the facts of life, and then travel into a realm of success that we have not achieved.

Don’t tear it down. Use it! Build from it so that we never have to face a time of forgetting how things once was.

I would like to thank Kwame Leo Lillard, Lyn Norris Hayes, African American Cultural Alliance, United Association for Black Veterans, and Creative Artists of Tennessee for creating the moment to reflect. The picture of the monument you see above is because of the actions taken by the above mentioned and others that are not mentioned to make this moment a reality. This is a moment in history that we have to look back at and say, though it was not a pretty moment, it is still something that we must never forget. Let it never be the discussion of needing to be torn down so that we never forget why it is here in the first place. To have knowledge of knowing the people that are responsible for it being here, places an understanding on its purpose and why I need to never allow it to be removed. So to every monument that stands, I leave you alone for the purpose of educating those so that we never forget, and always remember.

Watch snippet of “The Reflect”