Associate Professor of Art History Lydia Brandt, Ph.D., teaches courses on art and architectural history in the School of Visual Art and Design and is a specialist on the architecture of the South. She recently finished a year long project in partnership with Historic Columbia in which she created a guided tour of the monuments and architecture on the South Carolina State House grounds. Within the last month and in the context of the Black Lives Matter social justice movement, as people across the world have risen up against systemic and institutionalized racism, Professor Brandt spoke up about the need to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces from an historian’s point of view— and she isn’t the only historian calling for urgent action.

Professor Brandt was interviewed by news outlets in Columbia about what it means to allow monuments honoring Confederate leaders to stand on display for public commemoration. The statue of Benjamin Tillman was put on display in it’s current location on the State House grounds in 1940. Professor Brandt notes that putting up a monument to an individual who pushed for laws denying African Americans the right to vote clearly reflected the viewpoint of the South Carolina law makers and individuals in office at the time.