The beeping of construction equipment pierced the morning air. The dull sounds of traffic and commuters interrupted by a backhoe in the middle of the park. Then, a groan and a creak, and the taut cable began its work. The column upon which John C. Calhoun’s likeness stood for more than a century then collapsed to the ground. An echoing boom not unlike the crack of artillery that once rained over Charleston almost 160 years prior.
Visual reminders of Charleston’s past surround the now empty pedestal in Marion Square. Fort Sumter, where the first bellowing shot of the Civil War was aimed, sits idly in the harbor. Less than a mile away, the towering white steeple of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church stands high in the skyline. Below, tour guides recount tales of the steeple being painted black during the Revolutionary War to shield it from British bombardment. The story paints a striking visual contrast to the white tower that stands today.
While the sites of history are a driving force behind Charleston’s economy, its sounds have been lost to time or buried beneath the noise of a modern city. John C. Calhoun’s likeness stood over Marion Square, gazing down upon Calhoun St., towering above the greenscape it surrounds, but his memorial was silent. Silent until it fell this summer.
While the monument stood quietly over Marion Square, the public below was not so subdued in its response. In 1895, the News and Courier referred to the first statue as a “dreadful eyesore” and the African American community in Charleston immediately recognized the statue as a symbol of Jim Crow’s rise. Many critics took advantage of any opportunity to vandalize the monument, including using “the Calhoun Monument for target practice.” In 1894, an African American was even arrested for inadvertently shooting a white child while aiming at the statue.
Criticism of the monument rose to new heights in 2015. A re-envisioning of public memory and memorialization was sparked first by the racially-motivated attack in 2015 at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston. In 2017, the Charleston Commission on History and the City Council agreed to amend the plaque at the statue, adding specific language defining Calhoun’s support of slavery. The new plaque was never installed. Controversy over public monuments and memorials continued in the coming years. The Confederate flag was removed from the South Carolina State House grounds in response to the Mother Emanuel shooting. Tensions then reached new heights in 2017, when right-wing protesters violently marched on Charlottesville, VA protesting the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee. The reckoning with public monuments gained new momentum in 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.