The Past Isn’t What It Used to Be

A federal court master ruled last week that Ellis Island, the portal to this country for millions of immigrants, now formally belongs to both New Jersey and New York. The dispute between the two states over title to the island and its historic structures has lasted the better part of two centuries. To be sure, money is at stake, but that explains only a part of this long standoff. Mix in state pride with conflicting historical evidence and legal claims and you generate a very nasty tug of war over 27.5 acres.

In Washington, a monumentally stodgy 66-year-old statue of three leaders of the women’s suffrage movement has been parked in the Capitol basement while contemporary political leaders continue to argue over its future. Should the statue of these three women be elevated to the Capitol Rotunda, where the 11 other busts and statues all are of men? Is it historically accurate--or morally appropriate--to acknowledge the contributions of these white women and not Sojourner Truth, an African American abolitionist and women’s rights advocate? Some feminists now say no.

Across the Reflecting Pool, a debate still swirls as the memorial to President Franklin D. Roosevelt takes shape. Should Roosevelt, a polio survivor, have been depicted in the wheelchair he was forced to use? He will not be. Should he have been chomping on his trademark cigarette holder? He won’t be.

And then there’s the World War II Memorial. Final plans for this monument, which could sit between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, have yet to be revealed, but battles already rage over location, size and appearance, in effect over the importance of that war relative to the others fought by America.

Erecting a historical monument was once a quiet, sober affair. Almost every town square had its memorial to the Civil War dead, those who fell in World War I and the local boys who served in World War II. Names etched in gold, a wreath, a bronzed cannon ... uncomplicated.

Now memorials have become an opportunity to reconsider our history and re-fight national battles through the prism of our own times and sensibilities. Roosevelt may have smoked, but cigarette smoking now looks, well, like something beneath a political hero. And if New Jerseyites once felt that better New Yorkers than themselves to handle the unwashed millions who passed through Ellis Island at the turn of the century, well, that was then. Now there are tourist dollars and important symbolism to be found in that past.

American memories, it seems, are no longer uncomplicated.